


Tony Stark Meets an Extremely Unimpressed Time Traveler, or, Thomas Barrow Makes a Surprisingly Good 21st Century Butler

by Alex51324



Category: Downton Abbey, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Butlers, Crossover, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 87,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony Stark ditches a boring party, makes an addition to the household staff, throws a much better party, and tries not to sexually harass his new butler.  </p><p>Or,In which Thomas Barrow has a little trouble getting home from the pub, is generally unimpressed with many aspects of the 21st century, never thought of himself as a conservative dresser before, and may or may not be falling in lust with his new employer.</p><p>tl:dr: Thanks to time travel, Thomas Barrow becomes the Avengers' butler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cyclone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains:  
> 1\. Mild spoilers for Downton Abbey 4x01  
> 2\. Major ending spoilers for _The Great Gatsby_  
>  3\. Language reflective of early 20th century racial attitudes  
> 4\. Fade-to-black sex  
> 5\. Swearing
> 
> In addition, it ignores the events of Iron Man 3 and assumes that the Avengers all live in Stark Tower like it's a superhero frat house. 
> 
> Thanks as always to Beboots for beta, cheerleading, and coming up with the title!

“JARVIS!” Tony said happily as he answered the phone, having recognized the ringtone. “Tell me there are super villains attacking an orphanage. Bus load of nuns about to plunge off a cliff. Kitten up a tree—anything that’ll get me out of here.” He was currently in London, enduring a very dull party. He’d been press-ganged into coming because they were giving him an award—something about the solar-powered water filtration system he’d invented for a refugee camp in Africa. He hadn’t minded that part, and even had had been kind of touched by the slideshow of happy children, old people, and animals who now, thanks to him, had clean water to drink. But that sort of thing couldn’t hold his attention for long, and he was eager to make his escape. He kept being cornered by really earnest people who wanted to talk about the water filtration system or the many other problems plaguing Africa. Since he’d already _done_ the water filtration system, and the other things weren’t _engineering_ problems, there wasn’t anything he could do except nod and throw money around, which got old fast.

“I’m afraid I can’t provide an attack on an orphanage, sir,” JARVIS said dryly, “but I am picking up some SHIELD chatter that may be of interest. They’ve picked up what they’re calling a Spatio-Temporal Disturbance’ at approximate coordinates 54.1 North, 1.5 West.”

“When you say “Spatio-Temporal Disturbance’,” Tony said. “You mean….”

“SHIELD has not yet come to any conclusions, sir.” But an array of satellite data suddenly displayed from Tony’s phone. 

Scanning it, he wasn’t able to come to any conclusions either. The readings were more similar to those from Thor’s appearance in New Mexico than anything else Tony was familiar with, but they weren’t very similar to that. “Is this up to date? SHIELD’s not on the scene yet?” If they were, they’d probably try to keep him out of it. Emphasis on _try_. 

“It is, and they aren’t. They are scrambling a response team from the Helicarrier, but the first responders have just departed as of forty-seven seconds ago, and the rest of the team will be another twenty minutes behind them.”

Calculating the Helicarrier’s position and flight times, compared with his own, Tony _did_ come to a conclusion. “If I really haul ass, I can get there before they do,” he said, making a bee-line for the elevators, which would take him to his room, where the suitcase armor was waiting under the bed. “Start initializing the suit, and find me a takeoff point.”

#

Immediately upon regaining consciousness, Thomas rolled onto his side and was violently sick. _Waste of a perfectly good pint and pie,_ he thought as he heaved. 

When the spasms subsided, he wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and sat up, looking around him. He was in the middle of a field—pasture, probably; it didn’t look ploughed. The shapes of some trees and a bit of wall or something were dimly visible in the near-darkness off to one side. None of it looked particularly familiar. 

None of it looked a bit like the road back from Thirsk, which was where he ought to have been. Where he _had_ been. He’d been walking back from his evening out—he’d missed the last bus—when suddenly the wind had picked up, and—well, his memories were jumbled, and what he could pick out didn’t make much sense. He’d been swept up and tossed about—it was like a description he’d once read by a survivor of a cyclone in the American middle west. But you didn’t get cyclones in Yorkshire, as a rule. 

The more likely explanation was that he’d wandered off the road, fallen asleep—or passed out—and dreamed the rest of it. Only he didn’t think he’d had _that_ much to drink. Maybe one more than he ought to have had. Trying to take his mind off things. 

Still, the only thing for it was to find his way back to the road—or _a_ road, if the cyclone had really happened—and make his way back to Downton. Or to the nearest town—if the cyclone had really happened. 

Thomas got his feet under him and stood up, but as soon as he did, a wave of dizziness passed over him. He’d likely have been sick again if there was anything left in his stomach; as it was he fell back to his hands and knees and gasped for a moment or two. 

All right, perhaps he needed a bit more time to recover before he went looking for the road. Looking around in the dim moonlight, he located an outcropping of rock, crawled over to it, and sat up with his back to it. That was all right. He’d take it in stages, that was all. Once he’d been sitting up for a while, he’d try standing again, and take things from there. And the change in position gave him a little distance from the puddle of sick, which was all to the good.

To pass the time, he lit a cigarette –his Black Cats and lighter were in his pocket where they always were; at least they hadn’t fallen out in the cyclone. Though where his hat had gone, he had no idea. 

Halfway through the cigarette, Thomas saw a shooting star—a funny sort of one, it looked sort of blue, and was moving awfully fast. Still, on the theory that it couldn’t possibly hurt, he thought, _I wish I’d get home before I have to try and explain any of this to Mr. Carson_ , and kept his eye on the shooting star. His father had always said you had to watch them until they disappeared, or your wish wouldn’t come true.

As he watched, the shooting star seemed to grow larger. And to be coming straight for him. An optical illusion, Thomas told himself. Like how the moon seemed to follow along beside you, whether you were walking or riding in a car or railway carriage. 

Except—unlike the moon—shooting stars did have to come down _somewhere_. And here was as good a spot as any, as far as a chunk of rock from the heavens would be concerned. Thomas considered running for it—he thought he might just about be able to manage standing up now—but he certainly wouldn’t get _far_. 

He decided to stay where he was; if he was going to be crushed by a meteor, he might as well finish his cigarette first. And suppose it landed some distance off, in the direction he’d been thinking of running. He’d feel pretty silly then. 

Thomas had just made this decision when he noticed yet another disturbing thing about the shooting star. As it passed in front of the moon, he saw that in addition to the glowing bit, there was a dark silhouette. Sort of…man shaped. 

For a confused moment, he considered whether it might be another victim of the cyclone—one who had also somehow caught on fire, which meant that he was having an even worse night than Thomas was. But the air was perfectly still, and he was fairly sure that you could see cyclones—they didn’t just toss people around in the air invisibly. 

Meanwhile, the shooting star—or whatever it was—kept getting closer. Thomas’s next notion was that it might be a bird, diving with its wings tucked back…and also on fire…but it became clear that the shape was far too big to be any kind of bird, flaming or not. And the glowing part resolved into two separate points, a large one where the man’s feet would be—if it was a man—and a smaller one in about the middle of the chest. 

And it was still heading right for him. Thomas was growing increasingly convinced that it was a man. Like Sherlock Holmes said, once you’d eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth. He couldn’t think of much that was less probable than a man flying through the air while on fire, but the other options were impossible, so….

Belatedly, it occurred to Thomas that perhaps he ought to be thinking about how to extinguish the man when he came down. If he came down. Thomas wasn’t exactly England’s greatest humanitarian, but doing nothing while a man burnt to a crisp seemed a bit much, even for him. Only there didn’t seem to be a stream or anything nearby, and even there had been, Thomas didn’t have anything to carry water in. He supposed he could have a go at beating out the flames with his coat. Thought it might be a waste of a perfectly good coat. What were the chances the fellow was even still alive? Not bloody likely. 

But he had to change his mind about that, too, when the flying man stopped heading straight toward him, and veered off to one side in a graceful arc. Rather like an aeroplane—except those had wings, and they didn’t fly quite so smoothly when they were on fire. Thomas had seen a few spotters’ ‘planes go down in the war—never up close, but it had seemed pretty clear that as soon as the machine was damaged, it would be meeting the ground very quickly, and the pilot didn’t have much choice about where. The flying man was clearly steering. 

The flying man circled overhead for a minute or two, long enough for Thomas to conclude that it was definitely a man—he could make out arms, legs, and a head, at this distance—and that he appeared to be in control of his flight. And not particularly concerned about being on fire—surely if it was bothering him, he’d hurry up and _land_ , wouldn’t he? 

Then, quite suddenly, the man started plummeting straight toward the Earth, quite near Thomas. The fear that now he _was_ crashing was allayed when the man did a sort of flip in the air, like a circus acrobat, prior to alighting neatly in front of Thomas, down on one knee. The flames at his feet went out, but the light in his chest still glowed; in its light, Thomas could see that the man was dressed in what looked like a suit of armour out of the dark ages, except that it was bright red.

_No one_ , Thomas thought distantly, _is ever going to believe that this really happened_. He barely believed it himself, and he was here. 

Then again, when Thomas had been growing up, the papers had been full of humorous accounts of ignorant rustics having their first encounter with a motor-car, and thinking it was propelled by witchcraft, or that the horses snapped the traces and run off. Maybe in ten or twenty years _all_ the toffs would have flying suits of armor. It didn’t seem _likely_ —but then, Thomas’s own grandfather had gone to his grave insisting that motorcars were a passing fad. 

He had just made a firm decision to do nothing that even faintly resembled the response of an ignorant rustic in a comic paper, when the flying man flipped up the visor of his helmet and said, “Hey.”

#

After flying around taking readings for a while, Tony picked up a life sign at the exact center of the Spatio-Temporal Disturbance. All of the data suggested human and unarmed—or at least not armed with any type of energy weapon, which was the only thing he’d have to worry about in the suit—so he decided to go ahead and land. 

Up close, the guy looked pretty much like a normal guy—one head, four limbs, one heart, body temperature 35.7 C. A little low—the opposite of the Agardians, who ran hot. Also, not half bad looking, with dark hair, pale skin, and dressed in a dark suit. The guy made no sudden moves, just stood there looking at Tony—and not even looking particularly _impressed_. 

Well, if he was a time traveler, maybe the Iron Man suit was nothing special to him. 

Except that Tony wouldn’t have _thought_ that a time traveler from the future—or another planet—would be dressed quite so much like an undertaker. Or Lurch from the Addams family. 

Yeah, Lurch was way funnier; he’d use that when he told this story. 

There were still no signs of energy weapons, and Tony thought the face-to-face touch was important when dealing with an emissary from the unknown, so he retracted his visor and said in his own voice, “Hey.”

“Good evening,” said Lurch, calmly. 

British accent. Time Lord? No, there was no sign of a TARDIS, and he only had one heart—and also, he wasn’t fictional. Tony waited to see if there was going to be anything more—we come in peace, take me to your leader, anything like that—but there wasn’t. “Do you know where you are?”

The man looked puzzled. “Somewhere off the road between Thirsk and Downton, I…hope. I’m a bit lost myself.”

Into Tony’s earpiece, JARVIS said, _He is correct, sir, broadly speaking. Thirsk is a market town and civil parish some 3.5 kilometers northeast, and Downton is a resort hotel some 2.3 kilometers southwest. No road directly connects the two, but if there were, you would probably be near it._

“Good,” Tony said, to both JARVIS and the…Lurch guy. “How about…when you are?” It was a Spatio- _Temporal_ disturbance, after all. 

Lurch looked puzzled again, but took out a pocket watch—attached his _vest_ , with a _chain_ —and said, “Half past twelve. I am…extremely late. Could you see the road from--” He looked upwards. “Up where you were? If you could point me toward it, I’d be grateful.”

Possibly not a time traveler then. Or at least, not an _intentional_ time traveler. “What about the date?”

“Twenty-fourth of June. Well, twenty-fifth, technically.”

“What year?”

“Nineteen twenty one. Look, do you need…help, of some kind?” Now he sounded a little bit…impatient, which was not what Tony would have expected. “I was a medical orderly in the war.”

The war. If he thought it was 1921, he meant _World War One_. Steve was going to plotz. “Hoo boy. No, I don’t need any help.” Why the hell was he taking the flying suit of armor so calmly, if he was from 1921? They barely had _airplanes_ then. “But you sure do.”

“What do you mean?” the World War One medical orderly asked. 

But before Tony could figure out how to answer, he heard helicopter engines. So did the Man From The Past; he looked up, shielding his eyes with one hand against the glare of their searchlights. “What the bloody hell is that?”

“Chopper,” Tony shouted back. The man shook his head; that clearly didn’t mean anything to him. “Helicopter.” When had they been invented? They’d had them in WW2, but he wasn’t sure about earlier…the man did not look at all enlightened, so probably not. “Like airplanes, but…different.”

“Friends of yours?” 

“…sort of, yeah. Hang on, let me talk to them first.” He didn’t want SHIELD stealing his time-traveler, and he bet they would try. Tony had found him first; that ought to count for something. He jogged over to the landing chopper. There were three agents inside, one guy he knew—Decosta, or something like that—and two others he didn’t. But they knew who he was, of course. 

“Iron Man,” said the leader, a woman. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” he answered. 

“You shouldn’t be here. We’re dealing with some kind of Spatio--”

“—Temporal Disturbance; yeah, I know. Except not so much the _Spatio_ part. It connected with June 24th or 25th, 1921, but there doesn’t seem to be any geographic dislocation.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“I asked the guy who came through it,” Tony answered, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder.

#

Thomas watched in alarm as the thing that was like an aeroplane, but different, landed. It made a hell of a noise, and stirred up the air—like a cyclone, in fact. He watched from a distance as the flying man had a brief conversation with the people inside. He couldn’t hear anything—not over the racket the not-aeroplane made—but there were a lot of dramatic gestures. 

Well, the fellow _was_ American. 

After a few moments, they switched the machine off; the silence rang in his ears, like it had when there was a pause in the shelling at the Front. Then the flying man’s friends climbed out of the thing and started walking over, with the flying man in the lead. The others were dressed more or less normally—no suits of armor, at least. One was wearing an ordinary business suit, the second was dressed like a roustabout, in dark trousers and a canvas jacket, and the third…was a woman, wearing trousers, like riding breeches but with no skirt over them. Her sex was unmistakable, because her hair was down, and the bodice of her…costume, was just as tight as her trousers. 

Thomas saw no particular reason why women shouldn’t dress sensibly—including in trousers if they liked—but the woman’s attire was looked neither practical nor decent. He averted his eyes. 

“Here we are,” the flying man said cheerfully. “These are, uh…well, that one’s Agent Decosta.” 

That was the roustabout—a swarthy fellow, too. Italian, maybe, or a Spaniard? 

“Agent Talliman,” added the woman. “And he’s Agent Ling.”

The normally-dressed one was a Chinaman. Splendid. Thomas had never met one before, and what this night clearly needed was one more new experience.

“And I’m Tony Stark,” added the flying man. 

“Thomas Barrow,” Thomas said. Why were they all called _Agent?_ Agents of what? Maybe it was something like how the radical Socialists went around calling each other _Comrade_. 

“Thomas,” said…Agent Talliman. “We’d like to take you back to our…facility, so that we can…figure out what’s happened.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I wish I could help, but I must be getting back.”

“Back where?” the woman demanded. 

“Downton Abbey,” he answered. “I work there.”

“In…nineteen twenty-one,” she said. 

Was she _mad_? “Of course.”

“Yeah,” said the flying man—Mr. Stark. Or possibly Agent Stark, whatever he called himself. “We didn’t quite…get to that part yet,” he concluded sheepishly.

“What part?” Thomas wondered, wildly, if this was a kidnapping. If it was, they’d be disappointed—there was no one would pay ransom for _him_. 

The woman opened her mouth, but Stark held up one armored hand. “Let me. I mean, honestly—you guys? Do not have a good track record with this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” Thomas demanded. 

“See,” Stark said, “these guys would probably try to avoid telling you. They’ve done it before. Didn’t end well. It’s not nineteen twenty-one anymore.”

“Isn’t it? Did I sleep for a hundred years like Rip Van Winkle?” _Lunatics_. Absolute lunatics.

“No, but there’s a guy you’re gonna have to meet…. Right. Rip the Band-aid off. It’s twenty thirteen. But still Yorkshire. Ninety-two years and change into the future, exact same spot. We don’t have the faintest idea how it happened. But I am just the guy to figure it out, so it’s a good thing I’m here.” 

“That’s impossible,” Thomas said, shaking his head. _As impossible as a man flying around in a suit of armor?_ “No, I’m sorry, but it’s just not possible.”

Stark scratched his beard—a neatly-trimmed van Dyke. “It’s pretty surprising, isn’t it? I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen lots of things. But, here we are. What’s it going to take to prove it to you?”

“I’m going home,” Thomas said firmly, stepping back from them. “I’ll just—find the road on my own, thanks.”

Everyone except Stark reached under their jackets; the Chinaman pulled out a pistol. Thomas stopped, his blood running cold. They couldn’t be the _harmless_ kind of lunatics, could they? No, they had to be _armed, dangerous_ lunatics. That was just the way Thomas’s life went. 

Then the Chinaman shot him.

#

“ _Seriously_?” Tony yelled. “Seriously? You _shot_ my _time traveler_.”

“He isn’t yours,” said Agent Talliman.

“And it’s just a tranquilizer dart,” Agent Ling added. “We can’t stand here and argue with him all night; the rest of the analysis team is on their way. And we can’t let him go wandering around the countryside looking for some…Abbey.”

“We could have _taken him to it_ ,” Tony said. “It’s still here—it’s a hotel now; in 1921 it was a house—one of those big, old fashioned, Merchant and Ivory movie stately…pile…thingies. We take him there, he sees how it’s changed, he admits it really is the future, and there’s no need to _shoot him_. You guys really are _terrible_ at this.”

Talliman sighed. “We’re taking him to the Helicarrier.”

“I’ll come too,” Tony said. 

“I’m not going to try to stop you,” she answered. “But it’s up to Director Fury whether you get landing clearance or not.”

Hah. Tony didn’t need no stinkin’ landing clearance. 

#

Thomas woke in what he recognized, without much difficulty, as a hospital ward. There was a row of white-sheeted beds, all of them neat and empty, except for his, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see a nurse—or something—bustling about in a manner that was indefinably but recognizably medical. He also recognized a sort of hazy, floating feeling, like when they’d given him morphine after he was shot. 

After a few moments’ unconcerned contemplation of these details, he remembered that he’d been shot _again_ —in the chest, by some lunatics who’d turned up in a field. By rights he ought to be dead, but he didn’t even hurt so as he could notice. 

Thomas briefly entertained the notion that he was dead, and this was what the afterlife looked like, but as he lay there, he became aware of a dull ache in his head and a bit of queasiness. That didn’t seem to fit with the idea that he was dead—as he understood it, dead people usually got either no suffering at all, or a great deal more of it. 

As the morphine-like haziness faded, Thomas decided that the most urgent thing was to sort out how badly he was injured. After a couple of false starts, he managed to bring his hand up to his chest. When he did so, he noticed that he was still dressed, and there didn’t seem to be any bullet holes in him. 

The motion attracted the attention of the nurse-type-person, and before Thomas could come to any more conclusions, she came over. As she got closer, Thomas could see that she was wearing trousers, as the woman in the field had, but hers at least weren’t anything like as form-fitting; from a distance, Thomas had assumed they were a slim skirt. She also wore a sort of…smock, in the same light blue fabric as the trousers, and just as shapeless. It had short sleeves, revealing slim arms, the same nut-brown color as her face. 

“Oh, good, you’ve come round,” she said. Like the Chinaman in the field’s, her English was perfectly good; she even had a London accent, unlike the Chinaman’s American one. “How do you feel?”

Thomas didn’t immediately answer. He hadn’t really given the matter much thought, but if anyone had asked, he would have said he thought he must have gotten free of the lunatics somehow, and been brought to this hospital. But now he was beginning to doubt that assumption. 

“Can you understand me?” the brown woman asked, raising her voice slightly and pronouncing each word distinctly.

“Yes, of course I can,” he snapped. “I feel—not too bad, considering. I could have sworn I was just shot.”

“You were, but it was only a tranquilizer dart,” she explained. “I gather Agent Ling was a bit hasty—but perhaps it’s just as well, and no harm done. There was no telling if you’d been physiologically affected by your temporal displacement—or if you were carrying any of the pathogens endemic to your period of origin. You aren’t, as it happens, but if you had been, it would have been as well to get you into medical as quickly as possible, without taking the time to be polite about it.”

Thomas didn’t understand everything she’d said, but gathered that the gist was that she didn’t think he ought to mind being shot and brought to this hospital, since he might have been injured or ill, but he wasn’t. “I see,” he said. 

He decided to try sitting up, just to see what would happen. As it turned out, what happened was that the woman helped him, but warned, “I wouldn’t try standing up yet, if I were you. The tranquilizer hasn’t quite cleared your system yet.”

He nodded. “Thank you, ah, Nurse….” He thought it likelier, given her colour and mode of dress, that she was some sort of ward attendant or cleaner rather than a trained nurse, but people usually didn’t mind if you assigned them a higher status than they really had.

But the woman said, “Doctor. Doctor Vashanti.”

Oh. The lunatics had lady doctors. Coloured, lady doctors. “Thomas Barrow. Pleased to meet you.”

“You as well. Now that you’re up, I’d like to take a blood sample for analysis. Do you understand what that means? The Agents told me you were a medical orderly in World War—in the Great War.”

“I was,” Thomas said. “And yes, I know what it means.” It wasn’t something they’d had time for, at the Front, but Dr. Clarkson had done it from time to time at the hospital. He shrugged out of his coat and began rolling up his sleeve. At this point, it seemed like cooperating was the best thing he could do; he’d have to feel a good bit steadier and clearer-headed before he could start thinking about escaping. And even then, convincing them they’d got the wrong bloke and ought to let him go might be the better course, considering how casually they went about shooting people, tranquilizer darts or otherwise.

“I’ll be right back.”

She went back to the other side of the room and came back with a tray with a syringe and needle on it, along with a couple of glass tubes. She dabbed at the crook of his elbow with a bit of cotton-wool, saying, “This is just a bit of antiseptic, to prevent infection.”

“I’m familiar with the concept.” God knew more men in the war died of infection than of their original wounds, no matter how much antiseptic you sloshed around. 

“Good. This will just pinch a bit.”

She put the needle in his arm and pulled the plunger, like normal, but when the barrel had filled with his blood, she swapped it out for one of the glass tubes, and then when that filled, for the second. They hadn’t had that kind in the war—perhaps it was foreign. After withdrawing the needle, she covered the tiny wound with a bandage that—Thomas watched—came out of the packet already attached to a bit of sticking tape. 

Later, he would trace the beginning of his slow realization that the people in the field had been neither lying nor insane to that moment, but at the time, he just told himself firmly that that, too, must be foreign. 

But not foreign from wherever Doctor Vashanti was from—the tape seemed to have been coloured to more or less blend in with his skin, but not with hers. 

As Thomas was rolling his sleeve back down, the wall across the room _slid apart_ , and in came Stark, dressed in what looked like a suit of black pyjamas, with some sort of glowing pendant under his shirt, and holding his hand up to one ear. “—no, just got here,” he was saying, to no one in particular as far as Thomas could tell. “That one-eyed bastard kept me circling for ages waiting for landing clearance.” Looking at Thomas, he said, “Hey! I meant to be here when you woke up, but—somebody else had other ideas. Remember me?”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “You’re one of the lunatics who shot me.”

“Technically,” Stark said, “I’m a _consultant_ to the lunatics who shot you.” He took his hand away from his ear to gesture emphatically; Thomas saw he had some small, shiny object in it. “And if they had _consulted_ me, I would have advised against shooting you.” Putting the object back to his ear, he said, “Yeah, sounds like he doesn’t buy it yet. What would it take to convince _you_?”

Dr. Vashanti seemed to find nothing odd at all in Stark’s behavior; she just picked up the tray with the vials of blood and took them back to the counter and row of cabinets where she’d gotten the supplies. 

“I don’t know if that would do it,” Stark said, with the air of a man who was arguing with something someone else had said. “Didn’t they have—” Then, “Oh. Well, yeah, I guess you have a point. Okay. Yeah. Later.” He put the object into a pocket of his pyjamas. “Can we bust out of here? Doc, are you done with him?”

“Do you have any kind of authorization to take him out of here?” she asked.

“Would I suggest it if I didn’t?” Stark asked innocently.

Thomas was not particularly surprised when Dr. Vashanti replied, “In a word? Yes.”

#

After convincing Fury that Tony really was the best person to show Thomas around, and convincing Dr. Vashanti that he would take good care of him, and convincing Thomas himself that Tony was, at least, the least threatening of this band of lunatics, Tony was, at last, allowed to take his time traveler out of Medical and begin introducing him to the wonders of the 21st century. 

Well, to begin, introducing him to the fact that he really was in the 21st century.

“So,” Tony said as they set off. “I understand you’re, uh, you’re still a little bit skeptical about the 2013 thing. Perfectly understandable. I would be, too. This guy I know, who’s kind of the closest thing to an expert on what you’re going through, says that the best way is just to show you. It’s gonna be kind of a shock, but it’s gonna be a shock no matter what, so you might as well get it over with. So I’m just gonna show you this thing, and then, I don’t know, we’ll go find you some tea or something.”

Thomas’s expression was fixed, but slightly skeptical. He’d see soon enough. Tony waved to the crewman who was guarding the door, then stepped out onto the deck, gesturing for Thomas to follow him. 

It was just about dawn out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The towers and landing strips were lit up like the proverbial Christmas trees, and there was a tang of salt in the air. “What do you think?” Tony asked, spreading his hands. 

“I think it’s an ocean liner,” Thomas said, looking around. His tone clearly implied _so what_?

“Over there,” Tony said, pointing at the landing strip, where a jet was just coming down.

Thomas looked. “An ocean liner with an aeroplane landing on it. That’s…unusual.” He said the last grudgingly.

“ _Now_ do you believe you’re not in Kansas anymore?” Tony asked.

“Kansas?” Thomas asked blankly.

“You didn’t understand that reference?” Tony asked sheepishly.

#

Thomas looked skeptically at what Stark assured him was considered breakfast in the year 2013: a sort of bread roll with a hole in the middle, halved lengthwise and spread with bland, soft cheese. The promised tea turned out to be a tepid, brownish liquid, faintly tea-flavored, that came in a pasteboard cup. It reminded Thomas of the stuff they’d gotten at the Front in the war; under the circumstances, he wasn’t sure whether that was comforting or not. Stark had explained that the ocean liner with aeroplanes on it—they called it the Helicarrier; apparently there was only one—was a military vessel of a sort. Apparently some things never changed, and Army tea was one of them.

They were in a sort of canteen or mess hall. It was sparsely occupied, at this odd hour of the morning, but Army camps never really slept, and he supposed ships didn’t, either. “So—whose ship is it? A lot of these people don’t look English or American.” Thomas thought he’d heard more American accents than otherwise, but they seemed to come in all colours. Did America have more colonies now?

“Uh,” Stark said. “Well, it was made in the good ol’ USA, but it operates under the auspices of an international organization called the World Security Council.”

“Is that like the League of Nations?” Thomas asked. 

“…yes, actually. It kind of is.”

Thomas pondered that for a while, as Stark babbled about other things that had changed since Thomas’s say. Cars were faster, and nearly everyone had one; aeroplanes were bigger, and people whizzed about in them as casually as taking a train; the shiny thing—which periodically made noises, causing Stark to take it out of his pocket, poke at it with his fingers, and occasionally talk to it, was, Stark claimed, a telephone. 

“So does people turning up out of the past just…happen, from time to time, now?” Thomas asked, when Stark paused for breath.

“Ummm…no. You’re the only one. Steve’s situation was…different. But kind of similar.”

As an explanation, that didn’t explain much—for one thing, Thomas had no idea who Steve was. “So, there’s…not much chance of getting back, then.”

“Well,” said Stark. “That’s a difficult question. There are basically three possibilities about what happened. One, the easiest one, is that somebody invented a previously-unknown device that had the intentional or unintentional effect of transporting you—and your immediate surroundings—from 1921. It wasn’t just you it picked up,” Stark added, parenthetically. “It transported at least a couple dozen cubic meters of air—it’s hard to say how much, since it’s dissipated, but there’s a lot more coal and wood smoke dust around that spot than there should be, along with some leaves, dirt, and insects. Possibly an owl, too, but they’re not sure about that—brought it in for further testing on the grounds that it ‘looked confused.’” Stark returned to the point. “Anyway, if there _was_ a device—and the person using it started out from this time period—we might be able to find it, and either convince them to send you back, or capture it, figure out how it works, and send you back. Maybe.”

“A time machine, you mean,” Thomas said. He did _read_. 

“Right,” Stark said. “It’s not supposed to be possible—but people said that about heavier-than-air flight, too. The next possibility is some kind of natural phenomenon that’s never been observed before. If that’s it, I don’t think you’re getting back. We’ll need to invent a new branch of physics to even figure out how it _works_ , let alone control it.”

“And the third possibility?”

“Aliens,” Stark said. “People from outer space. Other planets. We’ve, uh, recently met some, and they can do things we don’t understand. We haven’t seen any evidence that they have time travel, but I doubt we’ve seen everything they can do. Or it could be other aliens we haven’t met.”

Spacemen. Well, since Thomas had accepted, over the last hour or so, that he had in fact traveled in time, he supposed Martians weren’t too big a leap. “What would that mean for my chances of getting back?”

“Uh, it wouldn’t be good,” Stark said apologetically. “The, uh—the representative of the aliens we’re on friendly terms with says it wasn’t them. He’s not exactly their greatest scientific mind, but his _mom_ kind of is, so he’d probably know if they had time travel. If it was the aliens we’re _not_ on friendly terms with…if they’ve come back, we have bigger problems than you. Sorry. And as for aliens we haven’t met yet…well, they could turn up ten minutes from now and say, ‘Hey, sorry, we accidentally turned our time-ray on your planet, is there anything we can do to help anyone who was inconvenienced?’ But I wouldn’t count on it.”

Thomas mentally reviewed everything Stark had said since he’d asked about going back, stripping out the irrelevant details. “So the short answer is…no, then.”

“Well, that’s an oversimplification, but, uh…yeah. That would be no.”

#

The time traveler didn’t yell, cry, or otherwise obviously freak out when Tony admitted they didn’t know how to send him back. He just sat there and stared at his half-eaten bagel for what seemed like a really long time. Then he said, “Well. What am I going to do now?” in a voice that was, somehow, worse than crying or screaming.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tony said, in what he hoped was a bracing way. “It’s not so bad, 2013. We have TV. And video games. And, uh…pizza!”

Thomas gave him a withering look. “I don’t know what any of that is, and I don’t see how it will help. I’m going to need some sort of job, aren’t I? And everyone who can give me a reference has been dead for fifty years or more.”

Oh, that. “Might not be a problem right away,” Tony suggested. “Did you have a bank account? Even if there wasn’t a lot in it, 92 years of compounded interest--”

“I didn’t. I’ve got--” Thomas took out his wallet. “Nine shillings. And a stamp.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to find something sooner than later,” Tony said uncomfortably. Or else sell his story to the tabloids. “But, you know, we’re not going to just toss you out into the street. We’ll, uh, we’ll find somewhere to put you up for a while, help you get adjusted.” If SHIELD got finished with Thomas before he was ready to go out on his own, he could always crash on Steve’s couch. Or one of the empty apartments in Stark Tower. 

“I’m grateful,” Thomas said distractedly. “Still. I don’t have any time to waste before I start thinking about the future. So to speak.”

“What did you do before? Besides being a medical orderly in the war.” Those skills would be too far out of date to do him any good at all. Although Tony was hard-pressed to think of any skills that wouldn’t be. 

“I was an under-butler. Footman and valet before that, at different times.”

“Oh, boy,” Tony said. “That’s…not good.”

“I didn’t mind it,” Thomas said stiffly.

“Sorry, I just meant—that’s not going to be much help in finding you a job now.” Almost nobody had butlers anymore—not even the kind of people Tony Stark knew. Maybe he could get something as a cater-waiter. 

“No,” said Thomas. “I don’t imagine there are too many households looking for a butler who’s over a hundred years old. Unless for the novelty value, maybe.”

Tony just nodded, not sure if it was a good time to explain that the situation was a bit worse than that.

Thomas went on, “But I can’t imagine what the household would be like. ‘Step into the drawing room, where you can gawp at my stuffed crocodile, my pet monkey, and my time-traveling butler.”

It occurred to Tony that he did have one idea of the kind of household where a time-traveling butler would fit right in. But, mindful of Pepper’s advice that, when meddling in other people’s lives, they generally preferred it if you gave the matter a little more thought than a spider-monkey on meth would, he decided not to say anything right this minute. “We’ll have to…look into the options,” he said instead. “See what we can work out.”

Thomas winced at that, for some reason. 

“D’you want more tea?” Tony suggested

#

After “breakfast,” Thomas was assigned a room on the Helicarrier—a very small one, with the furniture bolted to the walls like in a ship’s cabin, which he supposed made sense—and he spent most of the next day and a half in it. He was given a stack of what they called “orientation materials,” and—apart from when he was taken back to the canteen for meals or to various other places to be questioned by scientists and doctors about his experiences with the Spatio-Temporal Disruption, he primarily occupied himself by reading them. 

The stack of “materials” was topped by a booklet that said, **“Fast Facts: Read this First!”** on the cover, so, lacking any better idea of where to begin, he did so. A table of contents announced sections on Society, Technology, Daily Life, and Health and Safety. It seemed like a strange ordering of priorities to Thomas, but he supposed he might as well begin at the beginning.

The “Society” section began,

_The most striking changes that you may notice include the integration of women and of people of all racial backgrounds into all areas of life. Today, educational, social, and career opportunities are not limited by race or gender. In general, it is considered impolite to draw attention to a person’s race or gender, such as by expressing surprise that they occupy a role that may have previously been unusual for their race or gender._

So, Thomas translated, it was a good thing he hadn’t said anything about the coloured lady doctor. 

_Many terms for describing race and gender differences that were considered polite in the past are now found to be offensive. SHIELD personnel who have been briefed on your circumstances will make allowances, but other individuals may be angry or upset if you use language that they believe communicates disrespect for diversity._

Apparently it was an especially good thing that he hadn’t said “coloured lady doctor.” The next few pages talked about what words to use and not use. Adult human females, it said, were called “women,” not “girls,” and they didn’t always appreciate “ladies,” either. Nobody at all was called “coloured,” ever. Negros were “black” or “African-American.” (It didn’t say what to call them if they weren’t American.) Chinamen were “Asian.” He wasn’t sure _what_ Doctor Vashanti was. 

It seemed like an odd set of facts to put at the very beginning of the “Read this first” book, but given that the vessel seemed to be packed with what the booklet told him were known as “racial or ethnic minorities; people of color,” he supposed it was a good thing he’d found that out before he put his foot in it. 

Next came a few pages on women, emphasizing again that they could have any job they liked, and most of them did—or “worked outside the home” as the booklet put it. One was not to assume that a woman in a business setting was a secretary, or “occupies a traditionally subordinate role, as this may be considered offensive.” It went on to talk about how they dressed: apparently skirts and dresses still existed, but most women wore trousers more often than not, and even when they did wear skirts, they hardly looked decent: the book had a picture captioned, “Woman in conservative business attire,” which showed a woman dressed in what looked like the jacket to a riding habit, a more-or-less normal blouse, and a skirt that ended _several inches_ above her knees. 

Well, Thomas reminded himself, someone from the 1820’s would be shocked by the ladies of his time walking around with their ankles and lower calves exposed for all to see. 

His resolve to be un-shocked faltered, however, when the next page displayed a photo of a less “conservatively” dressed woman. On top, she was dressed in a sort of chemise, the thinness of which made clear she wore no corsetry of any kind, and her skirt reached far less than halfway down her thighs. The text emphasized that a woman who dressed in such a way should not be assumed to be a prostitute, sexually immoral, or unintelligent. 

“Right,” Thomas said to the book. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He kept on. “Technology” covered much of the same ground that Stark already had, though it was a bit more comprehensible. Though not always. Occasionally, it compared the new inventions it was telling him about to things he’d also never heard of. For instance, “television,” was apparently a great deal like “radio,” except it had pictures. That was not particularly helpful. With some effort, Thomas was able to remember that “radio” was what the Yanks called wireless telegraphy, but since as far as he knew, it was mainly used to communicate with ships at sea, he wasn’t sure why pictures were necessary, or why whoever had written this booklet seemed to think it was one of the first things he should know about.

“Daily Life” explained that “ethnic meals from around the world are now regularly enjoyed throughout America,” but “familiar dishes such as steak, chicken, and mashed potatoes remain popular.” Thomas was happy to read that—by the time he got to that part, he’d also “enjoyed” a luncheon that consisted of some sort of unleavened, foreign bread, rolled up around salad and wafer-thin sheets of something he was promised was meat. He supposed it wasn’t bad, really, but he wouldn’t have liked to eat it for the rest of his life. 

The same section also discussed how men dressed. Apparently, they tended to go about half-naked too, wearing hats and jackets only if the weather was cold. In hot weather, it was quite usual for them to appear in public in their undershirts and short trousers. It didn’t say whether you were allowed to think they were sexually immoral prostitutes, though. 

In “Health and Safety,” the detail that made the greatest impression on Thomas was that cigarettes were now, apparently, widely believed to cause cancer, and as such, smoking was now banned in “all SHIELD facilities, as well as most public places in New York and other major cities.” Bloody hell. The bloke who’d led him in to lunch had told him, when he tried to light up afterward, that he wasn’t allowed to smoke in there, but he had figured that was something to do with being onboard a ship—risk of fire, or something like that. And he’d also shown Thomas to a spot on the deck where there were a few other blokes—and two women—having an after-lunch fag. He wondered if that meant smoking was only forbidden _inside_ , or if some people just did it anyway. He’d have to be more careful until he found out. 

The next book in the stack, after “Read this first,” promised to be an overview of major events in world history—and it was, but, oddly, it started with the crowning of a new Queen of England in 1952. The “materials” certainly seemed to be written for someone in his exact situation—which, now that he thought of it, was a little odd, considering Stark had said that it had never happened before—but surely thirty years hadn’t gone by without one or two things of importance happening. Especially since the book covered some things that didn’t strike Thomas as particularly important, such as the opening of something called “Disneyland,” which Thomas gathered was something like an amusement pier at the seaside, only bigger. And there was a mouse involved somehow. 

He checked the rest of the stack to see if there was another book covering the missing years, but there wasn’t—the others mostly covered the same topics as “Read this first,” but in more detail. Figuring he’d had enough of that sort of thing for one day, he shrugged and kept on with the history, stopping eventually to go to sleep, and resuming again after breakfast. This time, he was taken to breakfast at what was evidently the usual time, and he was pleased to see toast, eggs, and bacon on offer—though he did notice that a lot of people chose the breadrolls with the holes in them instead. 

As he moved through the 1950’s and began the 1960’s, it certainly looked like things were building toward a war between the Americans and the Russians. He certainly hadn’t been naïve enough to think that the “War to end war” would live up to its billing, but he didn’t see what those two countries would find to fight about. They’d been allies in the Great War, and it wouldn’t make much sense for Russia to hop over all of Europe and an ocean to attack America. Or to hop over all of China and a different ocean, if they went the other way. 

Thomas started flipping ahead, to see if there had been a war, and if so, whose side England had taken, but before he could find out, another Agent Somebody knocked at the door. This one was a black gentleman, and he informed Thomas that he had an appointment with a Doctor Hughes. This proved to be another lady doctor—though white, this time—and dressed in what “Read this first” told him was conservative business attire. Thomas, mindful of all that he’d learned, remarked on none of it. Not even when she extended her hand for him to shake and said, “I’m Catherine Hughes.”

“Thomas Barrow,” he answered, though she probably already knew that. Idly, he wondered if she was any relation to Mrs. Hughes. Probably not—it wasn’t an uncommon name. She showed him, not into an examining room or ward, but into a room that was furnished as a sort of cross between an office and a sitting room, with a desk at one end, and a sofa and chairs at the other. 

“Please, have a seat, anywhere you’d like,” she said, sitting on the sofa herself. Thomas selected an armchair, and as he seated himself, she went on, “How are you settling in?”

“Ah. Well enough, I suppose,” Thomas said cautiously. “I’ve been keeping to my room, mostly. Reading.”

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Is there anything you have questions about?”

Thomas hesitated. “Well, I’m on the history part now. Did you Yanks ever go to war with Russia?”

She blinked, seeming to find that a surprising question, but recovered and answered, “No, fortunately, we didn’t, but there were times when we came very close.” She hesitated. “There have been a number of…smaller scale armed conflicts, throughout the last half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 21st.”

“I’d be surprised if there weren’t,” Thomas said. He was about to ask if Britain had been involved in any of them, but she spoke first.

“I understand you served in the Great War.”

“Yes. Just about everyone did, if you were physically fit.”

“Can you tell me a little bit about that?”

Thomas wasn’t sure why a doctor would want to know about that—it was pretty obvious he’d come back more-or-less whole—but answered, cooperatively enough, “I was with the RAMC. Royal Army Medical Corps. I managed to spend the second half of the war on Home Service—working in a hospital back in England, but I was in France for the first half. A regimental aid post.”

“So you were in the trenches?”

“Yes.”

“What was that like?”

“What was it like?” Thomas echoed. Nothing suitable to discuss with a lady, for starters.

“Yes.”

“Not very pleasant.” She seemed to be expecting him to say more, so he added, “Dirty. Dangerous, sometimes. And dull, when it wasn’t. I was glad to get out of it and back to England.”

“Dr. Vashanti noticed you have a scar on your hand, that looks like a bullet wound. Is that from the war?”

“It is,” Thomas said with a nod. When had she seen that? It must have been when he was unconscious. One reason he always kept it covered—beyond it not being very nice to look at—was that he didn’t want anyone getting a good enough look to start wondering how he’d come to have a bullet go straight through the palm of his hand. It would be a turn-up for the books to have gotten it past the Army for years, only to be caught now. “Turned out to be a bit lucky, actually,” he went on, doing his best to sound casual. “If it had been any worse I’d have lost the hand. But it healed up pretty cleanly, considering, and they decided it was weakened just enough they didn’t want me carrying stretchers on the battlefield, so I didn’t even have to go back to France.” 

“That is lucky,” she said.

_Suspiciously_ lucky, did she mean? It was all true—getting himself shot had been more a product of panic than a real plan; he could have ended up crippled for life, or so lightly wounded that it did him no good at all. “I’d signed up right at the beginning, a few days after the war was declared. The blokes who waited to be conscripted were showing up in France about the time I left.” 

“So you felt like you had done your bit?” Dr. Hughes asked.

Thomas tried to look as though the idea had just occurred to him. “I suppose it did work out that way. I was there for about two years, and back on Home Service for about two years. I was still able to serve my country, looking after the wounded men back home.”

“So you feel proud of your military service.”

Her tone didn’t give much hint as to whether she thought he should feel that way, or not. He hedged by saying, “Well, I did my best. But it wasn’t anything special. Most men did.” Remembering his reading, he added, “Women, too. We didn’t have—they could only do certain things. Nursing, working in munitions factories. Or keeping up with the jobs of the men who were away.” He considered. “Some of them weren’t all that keen on going back to how things were before.” Lady Sybil, for one. “Is that how it ended up like it is now, with women doing all sorts of things?” He thought the question might divert her from any further probing into his war wound.

“As a matter of fact, it was,” she said with a nod. “Though it took…time.” She seemed about to say something more, then visibly changed her mind. “What about the aims of the war? Were those…important to you?”

Suddenly, Thomas felt like he was at school, being called on for a lesson he hadn’t prepared. He’d always been a bit shaky on the war’s aims—he supposed there were some, but he’d never paid much attention to them. But at least it wasn’t about his wound. “Well,” he said slowly, “you can’t really let the Germans take over France. They’d be across the Channel to us, next, wouldn’t they?”

She nodded, but said, “The Americans and the English are both on good terms with Germany now.”

“Good.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” she asked.

“Well, I didn’t enjoy the war so much that I’d like to do it again,” Thomas said. “As long as they’re behaving themselves. And I suppose it makes sense, with Russia being an enemy,” he added, hoping to make up any points he may have lost by not knowing much about the war aims. 

It occurred to him that, with all these questions that didn’t seem at all medical, Dr. Hughes might be trying to sort out if he was insane or feeble-minded. He vaguely remembered reading an article, back home, about the Americans’ growing interest in eugenics, particularly in stemming the proliferation of the feebleminded. If they’d kept up with it, they might want to assure themselves he wasn’t one of those before they let him loose. He couldn’t exactly explain why they didn’t need to worry about him proliferating, so he thought he ought to make an effort to sound as sane and intelligent as possible. 

“Actually,” she said, “we’re on good terms with the Russians now, too. But yes, I think you’re right, that was one of the reasons it was important to make peace with them.”

Oh. “I must not have gotten to that bit yet.”

“It was pretty recent—the 90’s.”

Thomas was confused for a moment, before he realized she must mean the nineteen nineties, not the 1890’s. “That’s a bit of a relief; I was getting a bit worried about what they might get up to next. In my reading.”

“What else are you worried about?”

“In history, you mean?” He hoped that was what she meant; otherwise, he didn’t want to think about the question, let alone answer it. 

“No, in general.”

Damn. “Well. There’s what I’m going to do, here. In the future. As far as work, and finding a place to live, and all that. I don’t know anyone who’d still be…living. Even little Sybil would be, God, ninety-four or so.”

“Is she your daughter?”

“Hm? No, no. The…granddaughter of the family I worked for. There was Master George, too, he’d only be ninety-three, but I wouldn’t say I _know_ him.” Realizing that likely made little sense to Dr. Hughes, he added, “Lady Sybil—little Sybil’s mother—was a trained nurse in the war. We worked in the same hospital, so I got to know her, a bit more than just waiting on her.”

“What about your own family?” she asked.

“I didn’t really have one, not so you’d notice. Parents, of course, but they’d died before—before I left. Cousins, that was about it.” Thomas was reminded of another conversation he’d had, on the same subject, and added, “Thomas, _contra mundi_.”

“You weren’t married? Did you have a sweetheart?”

Now, why was she asking about that? “No. I was in service. Under-butler. Maybe they do it differently now, but back then, servants didn’t marry. Mostly,” he added, thinking of the Bateses. “There was a girl I walked out with, a bit, before the war,” he added, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to embellish a little. “Daisy. But she chose the other bloke.”

“How did you meet her?”

It was a good thing he hadn’t made up a girl out of whole cloth, Thomas thought. “We worked together. She was a kitchen maid. I was only a footman at the time.”

“What about your other workmates?”

“What about them?”

“Did you have other close friends among the people you worked with?” she clarified.

“Oh, you know. I try to be friendly with everyone.” There couldn’t be any risk in telling such an uncheckable lie, could there? “There were a few of us who had been there for a long time—Miss O’Brien, her ladyship’s maid; Anna, she started as a housemaid about the same time I did, and now she’s Lady Mary’s maid. Mrs. Patmore, the cook.” Even at 92 years’ remove, he quailed at the notion of claiming Mrs. Hughes or Mr. Carson as friends. But he ought to have some men friends, shouldn’t he? “And Bates, of course. He’s valet, now that I’m under-butler. The other fellow who was a footman along with me was killed in the war, so the rest of the blokes are new. Except for the butler, Mr. Carson.” He figured he’d better mention him so it was clear that they hadn’t gone out looking for a new butler while keeping him as under-butler. “But being the man in charge, he keeps his distance from the rest of us.”

She went on to ask more questions, about all sorts of seemingly unrelated topics, finally finishing up, after nearly an hour, with a couple that at least sounded like something a doctor might ask. “Have you been sleeping well?”

“It’s only been one night,” he pointed out. “But…I suppose I slept well enough. For being in a strange place.”

“What about your appetite?”

“Fine. The food’s a bit different to what I’m used to.”

“All right, then. We’ll just keep going as we are, and we’ll talk again in a few days; does that sound all right?”

He wasn’t precisely looking forward to it, but it didn’t seem wise to say so. “Certainly.”

#

“—alert and oriented, but presented with a very flat affect,” Hughes, the SHIELD psychiatrist, was droning on.

Returning to the Helicarrier after a lab all-nighter with Bruce, Tony had bluffed his way into a meeting on what they were apparently now calling the Temporally Displaced Person. He’d expected there to be more in it about the _phenomenon_ , but so far, it seemed to be all about Thomas himself. Dr. Vashanti had told them all about his medical test results—about half an hour of lab results that basically added up to, “Yup, he’s from the 1920’s, and he seems fine.” Now Fury had turned things over to the shrink.

“He seems to be taking his temporal dislocation very calmly, which I suspect means he’s repressing the trauma, as would be typical for a British male in the World War One era. He also showed very little emotional reaction when discussing the war, the death of one of his friends, and his rejection by a girl he’d been dating. The only concerns he expressed were about finding a job and a place to live—which does show he’s processing his situation on some level, although he’s concentrating the practical, rather than the emotional, level—and whether we were headed toward war with Russia.”

“What?” said Dr. Vashanti.

“He’s been reading the orientation materials that I prepared for Captain Rogers,” she explained. “I gather he’s gotten up to the Cold War.”

“What about World War _Two_?” asked some technician Tony didn’t know. 

“We…omitted the volume about the conclusion and immediate aftermath of the war,” Dr. Hughes explained. “And removed any stray references to it from the packet covering major world events, 1950 to 2010. Given that the war experience was very traumatic, and it was believed at the time to be a “war to end wars,’ it’s likely to be upsetting to him to learn that the entire thing was essentially repeated barely twenty years later.”

“With the extra fun bonus of atomic bombs and concentration camps,” Tony added. “But really—you guys tried the whole ‘keeping a giant secret and hoping he doesn’t notice’ thing with Steve, and that didn’t go so well, did it? I seem to remember something about him _breaking down a wall_ to get away…ring any bells for anyone else?”

“The TPD already knows about his temporal dislocation,” Hughes said. “Thanks to your unilateral decision to tell him in a completely nonsupportive environment. He--”

“The what?” Tony asked.

“Temporally Dislocated Person,” she said. 

“We could just call him ‘Thomas,’” Tony pointed out. “Fewer syllables.”

She ignored the comment. “He’s already processing a substantial trauma; we don’t need to add a second one. Accordingly, I’d like to stress to everyone who has contact with the TPD that they are _not_ to mention World War Two, Nazis, or any related concepts. In addition, World War One—if the subject comes up—should be referred to only as the Great War. He’s intelligent enough to make inferences and ask about them; if anyone says ‘World War One,’ he’s going to realize there must have been a second.”

“What’s your recommendation?” Fury asked.

“On balance, I think we should keep him here on the Helicarrier for at least a few weeks. It’s a very alien environment for him, but it’s also a controllable one. He can continue studying the orientation materials—I’m working on a new packet covering 1921 to 1950—attend regular sessions with me, and be gradually introduced to carefully selected facets of 21st century life. He’s been being escorted to meals by various crewmembers; once we figure out which ones he gets along well with, we’ll have them take him to selected recreational activities—sports, movie nights, that sort of thing. Once he’s oriented—well, we’ll have to ask if he wants to be repatriated to the UK. If he does, we’ll have to find some organization to partner with to continue his education and acculturation; if he’s willing to go to the US, we can do it ourselves. Either way, he’ll have to be set up with an apartment, taught skills of daily living, provided with education that will give him credentials for employment. A GED to start, or the UK equivalent, and then some sort of vocational training. He was an--” She glanced down at her notes. “Under-butler. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but since nobody has a butler anymore, it won’t be much help.”

“I have a butler,” Tony pointed out. 

“You have a computer program,” Fury said. 

“Who is a butler. And we had a regular one when I was a kid. Which seems like a great opening for me to suggest an alternative plan,” Tony added brightly.

“We are not making the TDP your butler,” Fury said. 

Damn. He must be getting predictable. “Why not? We can’t send him back, you can’t keep him locked up in a secret government facility for the rest of his natural life. He has to go somewhere, and do something. Why not Stark Tower? Why not be my butler? Why not Zoidberg?”

Fury shook his head. “What?”

“Scratch that last one. Seriously, though, what’s the downside?” Tony looked around the table.

Dr. Hughes spoke up. “In the present day, with proper education, he has many more career opportunities open to him than waiting on you hand and foot.”

“So,” Tony said, “you think domestic service is…demeaning,” Tony translated. 

“There’s a reason nobody has servants anymore,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s that most people can’t afford them,” Tony said. “Which—hey—not a problem. It’s not like I’m planning to keep him chained up in the basement, hand-washing my skivvies. He can help JARVIS run the house—having a butler who’s completely noncorporeal has one or two disadvantages—and get acclimated to the 21st century while he’s at it. There’ll be a lot about it that’s different, but some things about it’ll be familiar—which, take it from Steve, makes a difference. Which brings me to the most important reason this is a genius idea: Steve.”

“Steve wants a butler?” Fury asked dryly.

“Actually, he’s a little uncomfortable with the idea,” Tony admitted. “ _But_ he lives at the Tower, and he’s the only other person in the world who has the slightest idea what it’s like to suddenly find yourself in the future, and he’s eager to help. They can have a 24/7 support group. For Temporally Dislocated Persons. Now,” he added, holding up his hand. “You’re about to ask why I don’t just invite him to stay at the Tower as my guest, right?”

“The thought had occurred,” said Dr. Hughes.

“It occurred to me, too. Steve thinks Thomas would be pretty uncomfortable living on charity in my palace of wonders—you know he only puts up with it because I convinced him it’s an Avengers perk, and he still tries to pay me rent every couple of months. This way, Thomas has a job—which will really only keep him busy for a couple of hours a day, considering everything in the Tower is automated. It comes with room and board included, on top of a generous salary, health benefits—I can get him on Stark Industries’ group plan—and he’ll have plenty of free time to get his GED, or whatever he wants to do. Plus—face it—‘butler to Tony Stark’ is the kind of thing that draws attention on a resume. Case in point, my former PA is now CEO of a Fortune 500 company.”

“Because you made her CEO of your Fortune 500 company,” Fury pointed out.

“She’s had offers from other ones. Look. I’m not saying we should, say, shoot him with a tranquilizer dart drag him to my house while he’s unconscious. We could try…asking him. Tell him about Dr. Hughes’s plan, tell him about my plan, see what he wants to do.” Tony bit his lip. “Plus, I’m not sure you can actually _stop_ me from offering him a job. Or keep him here against his will if he wants to leave. I’ll have to check up on it, but I think that’s one of those…human rights thingies.”

“I strongly recommend that he at _least_ stay here for the several weeks of orientation that I proposed,” Dr. Hughes said. “There are a number of sound psychological reasons for a more controlled introduction to the 21st century. And there’s a case to be made for not presenting him with potentially confusing choices while he’s still processing the trauma of his dislocation.”

“And you will have the opportunity to make that case,” Fury told her. “To him.”

#

“Hi, I’m Steve Rogers,” said Steve, to the guy Tony insisted on referring to as “my time-traveler,” usually while bouncing. They were in the Helicarrier’s mess hall, where Tony had arranged for him and Steve to meet.

“Good afternoon. Thomas Barrow,” said the guy. He was dressed in a black suit that looked old-fashioned even to Steve, with a vest and watch chain, like Steve’s grandfather had worn. 

“I knew you guys would hit it off,” Tony said happily, turning to wave off the crewman who’d been escorting Thomas. 

Since so far they had only exchanged greetings and names, Steve suspected Tony was up to something. “I don’t know what Tony’s told you about me,” he said to Thomas as they got into the serving line. 

“Very little,” said Thomas. “I believe he said you were a ‘guy I should meet.’”

“Right,” said Steve. “I was born in 1919.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. “You look very good for your age.”

Tony snorted. 

“In 1943 I…fell into the Arctic Ocean and was frozen for seventy years,” Steve explained as he grabbed a tray and reached past the stack of paper cups for a ceramic one. “SHIELD found me and thawed me out about two years ago.” He poured himself some coffee from the “French Roast” urn. As far as he could tell, it had the same stuff in it as the other, but it had been cleaned more recently.

“I see,” Thomas said. “Are those the cups for the coffee? Maybe I’ll try that.”

Tony was right; this guy was hard to impress. “Uh, you can use the cups for anything,” Steve said. “A lot of people like the cardboard ones because they can take them with them when they leave the mess, but I figured we’d talk for a while, so we might as well use the real ones. It’s less wasteful.” Even now, he was sometimes shocked by how much these people threw away—when they’d had a rooftop picnic for his birthday last summer, Tony had bought “disposable” plastic plates that Steve was absolutely certain his mother would not only have kept for re-use, but probably saved for special occasions. 

Thomas nodded, seeming to find that information of more interest than the part about Steve also being a man out of time. But after they’d collected their drinks and pastries and found a table, Thomas said, “Do they…thaw people out regularly now, then?”

“No, most people wouldn’t have survived that, and they’ve done a lot of things in this century, but they haven’t found a cure for death.” Steve thought that might be important to clarify, given…well, everything. “I was….” It was funny; ever since he’d woken up in this century, everyone who knew who he was also knew all about the Super Soldier project. This was Steve’s first time having to explain it. “In the 1940’s, there was an experiment to…expand human capabilities. I was the test subject. The experiment…worked. I’m unusually strong and fast, I heal very quickly, and I can survive being frozen. Among other things.”

“That’s just him, by the way,” Tony put in, not looking away from his phone. “We aren’t all…engineered supermen these days.”

Steve continued, “And that’s not really important right now. What is important is that I had to get used to—all this. I know it all looks pretty strange right now, but once get past the surface, a lot of things are the same. Some people are really good, some are really bad, most are muddling around somewhere in the middle, trying to do the best they can.”

That line usually went over well on the talk shows Steve appeared on, but Thomas just nodded. “I suppose they would be. Hasn’t really been that long. When you think about it. I mean, someone who turned up in…my time, from 1830, wouldn’t find us changed all out of recognition.”

“No,” Steve agreed. “You’re right. Is there…anything you have questions about? I know SHIELD’s given you some stuff to read—they gave to me, too—but they don’t think of everything.”

Thomas went even stiller than usual for a second or two. “Well. If you don’t mind my asking. What do you do for work? If you work.” 

“I’m with SHIELD,” Steve said. That wasn’t going to help Thomas much, unfortunately. He’d been hoping for some easier questions—he had some stuff prepared, about things SHIELD had forgotten to tell him about. “Part of a team that responds to…unusual threats. It’s kind of like what I was doing before, in the forties. I was lucky that way. But SHIELD’s putting together some ideas for you, I think.”

“One idea,” Tony said, still playing with his phone. “And my idea is already ready, but I’m not allowed to tell you yet. Dr. Hughes thinks if she tells you her plan first, you won’t realize that mine is way awesomer.” Now he glanced up. “Or is that supposed to be ‘more awesome?’”

Steve ignored him, and told Thomas, “People today say ‘awesome’ a lot. It just means ‘good,’ not actually inspiring awe.”

“Many of my ideas inspire awe,” Tony put in.

Steve continued with the ignoring. “‘Cool’ is another one they say all the time. That means ‘good’ too.”

Steve thought that was useful information—it would have saved him a lot of confusion if someone had explained it early on—but Thomas just said, “What about these ideas?”

“Can’t tell you,” Tony repeated. 

“Why is that stopping you?” Steve wondered. “You don’t usually do what you’re told.”

“My pysch review is coming up,” Tony answered. “The good doctor assures me that she can and will pull any number of strings to make sure she gets to do it.”

Now it all made sense. “But she couldn’t fail you just for revenge,” Steve pointed out.

“It’s cute that you think that,” Tony answered. 

As he so often did, Steve regretted that he’d stopped ignoring Tony. To Thomas, he explained, “Tony’s on my team, too. You saw the Iron Man suit?”

“The flying armor? Yes.”

“Which is awesome in every sense of the word,” Tony added. 

Steve went on, “Another weird thing about now is that it’s normal to get a checkup by a psychiatrist—it doesn’t mean they think you’re crazy. Everybody who works for SHIELD has to go at least once a year. More if you’ve had a traumatic experience.”

“I thought she might be one of those,” Thomas said. 

Tony glanced up again. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Thomas told him. “She just said she was a doctor. And asked a lot of strange questions.”

“Did she ask you about your war trauma?” Steve asked. 

“I don’t have a war trauma,” Thomas said. 

“I bet she thinks you do,” Steve said. “She thinks I have one. It’s her specialty.”

“She thinks _I_ have a war trauma,” Tony added. “And I wasn’t even in a war. And _anyway_ , not identifying herself as a psychiatrist has got to be some kind of professional ethics violation. JARVIS is looking into it.”

“Tony,” Steve said. “Don’t. She’s perfectly nice, and she was very helpful when I first woke up here.” Despite her conviction that he had a war trauma. To Thomas, he went on, “It’ll all work out.”

“I hope it does,” Thomas said. “But I’m used to making my own luck.”

“That’s not a bad way to be,” Steve agreed. “But I don’t think waking up 90 years in the future—or even just 70—is something anybody can be prepared for.” 

Thomas looked down into his coffee cup for a while, then changed the subject. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Oh—you’re not supposed to, on SHIELD property,” Steve said, wondering if anyone had told him about lung cancer yet. 

“I know, but there’s a place outside—that black…American…gentleman showed me.”

So Steve took him out on deck—Tony stayed behind, with his phone. Steve got a little bit of secret amusement out of watching how the staffers reacted to having their secret smoking spot discovered by Captain America: people who knew him mostly from the movies and comics tended to think he was some sort of goody-goody. A couple of them dropped their cigarettes into the sand bucket and hurried away without making eye contact; the one who stayed said, “Filthy habit, Cap—I’ve been trying to quit.”

“You probably should,” Steve said. “It’s not very good for you.”

Thomas asked the man who had spoken, “Meanwhile, do you have an extra one? I’m out.”

“Sure.” He handed Thomas one from a crumpled package. “You need a light?”

“No, that I have.” Thomas tore the filter off, put the cigarette in his mouth the wrong way around, and lit the torn end with a silver lighter. “Good thing, too,” he added to the other smoker. “It’s my lucky one from the war.”

Steve knew he would only be increasing his goody-goody reputation, but he felt like he had to say, “The filters are supposed to make it a little less bad for your health.”

“Yes, I already heard about how I’m giving myself lung cancer,” Thomas said. 

Thomas’s smoking buddy said, “But you don’t want to quit when you’re going through a major lifestyle change. Too much stress. That’s why I’ve had so much trouble finding a good time to quit—nothing but stress around here.” Tossing his butt into the sand bucket, he added, “And I’d better get back to it,” before walking off.

Leaning against a nearby railing, Thomas said, “You do meet people, smoking. I found that out where I worked before.”

“I guess you do,” Steve agreed. He’d seen that in the war; sharing or asking for a cigarette was a good way to get talking with somebody. “I never picked up the habit. Before the…experiment, my lungs didn’t work so good, and after, it didn’t have much effect on me.”

Thomas just nodded and blew out smoke. 

He really didn’t seem to be taking advantage of the opportunity to ask questions; Steve decided to move into some of his prepared material anyway. “One of the things that surprised me the most about people now is how much they swear. Even the women.”

“Haven’t noticed that,” Thomas said.

“They’ve probably been restraining themselves,” Steve said. “They also think that their generation invented those words. Tony says ‘fuck’ about fifty times a day, but he almost busted a gut the first time he heard me say it.”

“I was in the Army,” Thomas said. “I’ve heard them all.”

“So was I, but they’ll think you haven’t.”

#

Thomas had gathered that Rogers was a soldier. He stood like one—or like a footman, but he clearly wasn’t one of _those_ —and the crewman calling him “Cap” was another hint. Now, as the pieces began settling into place, he asked, casually, “Was there a war, where—when—you came from? The book they gave me starts with 1952.”

Rogers let out a breath. “Yeah. They were kind of…waiting, to tell you about it. They tried to keep things from me, too, when I first…got here.” Rogers smiled humorlessly. “I didn’t like it much. Uh, yeah. The war was kind of a big one. That’s, uh, why the experiment. They were trying to make super-soldiers.”

“Suppose that makes sense,” Thomas said. As much as anything had since his trip through the cyclone-that-wasn’t, at any rate. “Was England in it, too, or just you Yanks?” 

“No, England was…in it. And some other countries.”

The hesitation was telling. They’d been “waiting” to tell him about it. Why? “We weren’t on opposite sides, were we?” That might explain why they’d whisked him away from England so quickly, if they were an invasion force…except the war, Rogers’s war, had been decades ago. 

“No, no. Same side. Us, and, uh, France and Russia, were the main ones.”

That sounded quite familiar. “Against who?”

Rogers hesitated again before admitting, “Mostly the Germans. Plus the Italians and the Japanese.”

“Bloody hell.” Them, again. “Didn’t they have enough?” Thomas certainly had.

“Guess not,” Rogers said.

“Blimey.” A thought occurred. “We did _win_ , I hope?”

“Oh, yeah. We won.”

That was something. And his history book that started in 1952 didn’t say much about Germany. “They’ve been quiet since then?”

“Yes—coming up on seventy years, now,” Rogers confirmed.

“Not a bad innings.” At least they’d stayed down, the second time. “But we only kept them down for twenty years, the first time?” What had been the bloody _point_?

“About that, yeah.” Rogers shifted his weight uncomfortably. 

Thomas took a last draw on his cigarette before pinching it out. “Glad I missed that.” Doing the sums, he realized that he’d likely have been over military age by the new war, even if he hadn’t skipped over it. But Jimmy might not have been, and Alfred. Master George would have been just the right age to be shipped off—a fresh-out-of-Eton Lieutenant, like so many Thomas had seen in the trenches. He wasn’t that much older than they, but they still looked like schoolboys to him. 

He shook his head. “There was a cartoon in a trench newspaper—did your lot have those?”

“More or less,” Rogers said.

“There was one that had a cartoon—I kept in my cigarette case for a while. We thought—the top brass were always saying the next big push would end it, but it never did, so it seemed like we might be there forever. In this cartoon, the caption said it was somewhere around 1940, and there were a couple of blokes in a trench talking about the sons they’d conceived on home leave ought to be showing up to fight any day now. I suppose if you look at it that way, we ought to be glad we got twenty years of peace in between.” He’d missed the twenty years of peace, too. “Was it as bad as ours?”

“It was…bad in different ways,” Steve said. “They did learn enough not to let men get stuck in holes in the ground fighting over the same stretch of mud for years on end.”

That was something, at least. Thomas wondered what they’d done instead.

Rogers went on, “But…well, the Germans committed a lot of atrocities, in the countries they conquered.”

They had in Thomas’s war, too. “Which countries?” Had they made it across the Channel? 

“Mostly Eastern Europe. They got as far as France, and held part of it. They never took England,” he added, apparently understanding the direction of Thomas’s thoughts. 

Thomas let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Good.”

“But there was a lot of progress made with aviation in the twenty years in between, so…there wasn’t a lot of bombing from airplanes in your war, was there?” 

“There was some,” Thomas said warily. 

“There was a lot, in mine. A lot of…bombing of civilian targets. The RAF bombed the Germans at home, and they bombed London pretty hard.” 

“I don’t mind the first part of that,” Thomas noted. So they _had_ made it across the Channel. In aeroplanes. He imagined England looking like France and Belgium had, a mass of mud and craters. 

“London…came through it better than a lot of people expected,” Steve added. “It was sort of a point of pride, that they weren’t going to give in. ‘Keep calm, and carry on,’ was one of the slogans. And ‘London can take it.’”

So maybe it hadn’t been as bad as Thomas was picturing. “That sounds like us.”

“The other really bad part,” Steve added, “was that the Americans, toward the end of the war, invented a …special sort of weapon. It could flatten most of a city, and kill everyone in it, with just one bomb.”

“How the hell did they do that?” Thomas asked. The bombs they’d had in his war were bad enough. But he didn’t exactly understand how those worked, either. “Thank God the Germans didn’t have it,” he added in an undertone. If they had, London _would_ have been flattened. 

“It is a good thing they didn’t,” Rogers agreed. “A lot of people think we never should have used it, but they did, on Japan. Germany’d already surrendered, but the Japanese were hanging on, and—well, it worked, they surrendered very quickly and we haven’t had a peep out of them since, but it was a pretty horrible weapon.” 

“No argument here.” The thought of a city-flattening bomb was fairly terrifying, but knowing it had only been used on Japan—a country Thomas knew almost nothing about and might not have been able to find on a map without several guesses—made it a bit easier to put out of his mind. 

Not like the bombing of London. He tried to remind himself that anyone he knew was dead by now either way, so what difference did it make? But it did. 

Rogers went on, “And I should warn you, it’s kind of a sensitive subject, because Tony’s dad worked on the project. He and Tony didn’t get along—I don’t know why not; they’re a lot alike—but he gets offended if you say maybe Howard should have refused to work on it. Though that might not be a problem that you’ll have,” he added. 

“It doesn’t seem like a subject that would come up very often,” Thomas agreed.

“No. I…talked about it a lot, when I first heard about it, but that’s more of a personal problem.”

One thing learning about the second war with Germany did for Thomas, was take his mind off how SHIELD and Stark apparently had plans for him they didn’t want to tell him about. Still, he was glad when Rogers moved on to lighter conversational fare. “Another thing is,” he said, “they think human beings should have no natural odour at all.”

“How do they manage that, then?” Thomas was becoming increasingly comfortable with Rogers—even though he’d let slip that he’d been an officer in his war, it was clear he’d only been a temporary gentleman. Even allowing for Americaness, his manners and way of speaking marked him out as lower-middle-class at _best_. 

“To begin with, they take a full bath or shower every day. Sometimes twice.”

“Not everybody,” Thomas objected. “How’d they get anything else done?”

“They have hot and cold running water in just about every house,” Rogers explained. “They think it’s unhygienic not to.”

“Even poor people?”

“In America and Europe, yeah. Some of the other continents, the poorest people don’t, and the really rural ones. But in New York, even in the _tenements_ , every family has their own bathroom. I mention that growing up, we shared ours with all the other families in the building, and they think we might as well have lived in a cave.” 

And that confirmed Thomas’s estimation of his class. 

Rogers continued, “And there’s this stuff you’re supposed to rub under your arms—deodorant. It’s a sort of white, chalky stick.”

“Oh, is that what that’s for? They gave me some.” There was a shower in his room, too—an item Thomas had only previously seen in the Army. It was in a little cubicle along with the toilet; he’d figured out the latter easily enough—the only difference was in how you flushed it—but he hadn’t seen any reason to experiment with the shower. Perhaps he should—he didn’t want the future-people to think he was dirty. 

“And they wear a completely different set of clothes every day.”

That, Thomas wasn’t sure he was willing to do, at least not until he had the means of buying his own proper clothes. He’d been given some—canvas trousers and some really peculiar shirts, jerseys in bright colors—but he’d only put on the drawers and an undershirt, which he’d worn under his own shirt, waistcoat, and jacket, like a civilized person. 

Rogers also told him about private life in the future. “Almost everyone does—you know, it—before they’re married. If you have a steady girl, it’s just about expected, and it’s not that unusual to go right to bed with somebody you just met. Tony does it all the time.”

That, at least, was something he didn’t have to worry about. “There were always men like that, though. And girls like that,” he added, thinking of Ethel. Her experiences as a prostitute may have turned her off the idea, but before that she hadn’t been particularly reluctant. 

“Yeah, but now nobody looks down on the girls for being like that. Much, anyway. Natasha—she’s on our team, too—says it’s insulting to women to assume they don’t like sex just as much as men do.”

Thomas tried to wrap his head around that one. “So it’s insulting to say they’re _not_ promiscuous?”

“Not exactly. But they don’t really agree on how much is too much, or how fast is too fast.”

After sharing a few more details like that, Rogers—“Call me Steve”—had left, and Thomas went back to his room. The next morning, he was once again taken to Dr. Hughes’s consulting room, but when he got there, Mr. Stark was already there, as well as a black-or-African American fellow dressed in black leather and sporting an eye-patch.

“Thomas,” Dr. Hughes said. “You already know Tony, and this is Director Fury; he’s in charge of SHIELD.”

“Sir,” Thomas said, as neutrally as he could manage. Somehow, he’d expected that the _officers_ in this outfit, at least, would be white. Though he supposed “Read This First” had warned him. 

“Please, have a seat,” Dr. Hughes said. Thomas didn’t think he should—the officer was still standing up, though he was resting his backside against the doctor’s desk—but he decided, on balance, it was best to do as he was told. Once he was seated, she went on, “I understand you’re concerned about what finding a career and making a life for yourself in the 21st century.”

“Yes,” Thomas said, wondering if he ought to be calling her “ma’am.” Doctors were officers, too. But he wasn’t exactly enlisted, was he? Gentleman of leisure, was Thomas Barrow. 

“There’s no need for you to make any major life decisions just yet,” she said with a smile, “in fact, I’d advise waiting until you’re a bit more settled to decide anything. Right now, you might not have a clear picture of the choices available to you.”

This was about the plan Stark had mentioned yesterday, Thomas realized. Which he and the good doctor disagreed about. He ought to tread carefully. “I think I’d feel more comfortable knowing I had some choices,” he said. 

“Of course,” she said.

He waited. 

“Well. The idea that I and my colleagues recommend is that you stay with us for a few more weeks, until you begin to feel a bit more acclimated. Then you can begin becoming integrated into the community—we’d provide housing and financial assistance, and then a bit later you could train for a new career.”

“A new career,” Thomas repeated. At his age? He’d have to start at the bottom of whatever it was. 

“Yes. You see, there aren’t very many households that keep domestic…help anymore.”

Things had been going that way after the war—maybe they’d gone even further that way after the second war that Rogers had told him about. He nodded.

Dr. Hughes went on, “You could look into something in a related service field—hotel or restaurant work might draw upon your existing skills—or take the opportunity to learn something new. You’ve shown an interest in the medical field, for instance. Your previous training is quite…dated, but once you’re up to speed, you could go to college and become a nurse or medical technician. It’s not unusual for men to be nurses these days,” she added.

Between nurse and _hotel waiter_ —like bloody _Alfred_ —he supposed he’d prefer the former. Maybe. “How long would that take? The…college?” That didn’t sound quite right to him—the Americans called University “college,” and surely you didn’t need that to be a nurse?

“Well, before you could start, you’d need a certificate indicating that you’ve completed secondary education.”

“I haven’t got one of those,” Thomas noted. The schoolmaster had written him a reference, but he’d lost track of it ages ago. “I did go to school, all the way up until I was fourteen, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“No, you’d have to earn one by examination,” Dr. Hughes explained. “The details vary depending on whether you decide to settle in the US or Britain, but in both places you’d need to pass exams on mathematics, reading and writing, and science. The US requires social studies—history, geography, and civics—too.”

“I do know how to read and write,” Thomas pointed out. “And I got as far as geometry in Maths, but I’ve forgotten a lot of it.”

“Most people have, if they take the tests later in life,” Dr. Hughes said. “There are self-study materials and classes you can take. The reading and writing shouldn’t be much of a problem, but in the examination, you read passages and answer questions about them, and write a short composition on a given topic. Lack of cultural familiarity with the topics might be an obstacle, at first.”

“And I suppose the science has changed a lot. And the geography.” They had redrawn the map of Europe after his war; the history book they’d given him hinted it had been done several more times since. “And all the new bits of history.”

“Yes. So it may take several months of study before you’re ready for the examination.”

Several months. But if “housing and financial assistance” meant he’d have his room and board provided for him while he worked at it, he supposed that might not be too bad. “And then the nursing…thing?”

“There are two and four year programs.” 

Two or four _years_? His Army training had only been a few weeks. Even if they were willing to house and feed him for that long, he’d go mad. “Uh…and how much schooling do they want for a hotel waiter?”

“That you might be able to start immediately after you’ve completed the equivalency tests,” she said. “But to advance in the career, an additional degree in business or hotel-restaurant management would be helpful.”

Bloody hell. “And those take….”

“There are two- and four-year programs,” she repeated. “You could study part-time while you work, but that takes longer.”

“I see. What about digging ditches? Do you need a degree for that?”

Stark spoke up. “No, for that you need a heavy equipment operator’s license. And a GED. It’s, uh, not done by hand,” he explained. “Can I tell him my plan now?” 

The question seemed to be aimed at Director Fury, who said, “Dr. Hughes?”

“Those aren’t the only opportunities available to you,” she said. “There are many other careers, perhaps some you’ve never even dreamed of. But my recommendation is that, when you are ready to leave here, you begin studying for the secondary schooling equivalency, and then choose a program of continuing education. _Stark_ has a different idea of what would be best for you.”

Stark bounced up out of his chair. “Yes. Like Dr. Hughes said, most people can’t afford live-in domestic staff anymore. Some of us can. Like me. And it turns out I could use an under-butler, if you want the job.”

Thomas had suspected Stark of being some variety of toff, but hadn’t considered him in light of a prospective employer before. “That’s very kind of you.”

“It’ll be great,” Stark said. “You get a generous salary, complete medical and dental, retirement plan—all the usual stuff. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to get the GED—the secondary equivalence thing she was talking about—but you can study for it in your spare time.”

Thomas liked that idea a lot better than he did the notion of living on charity for however long it took to be qualified to start at the bottom as a hotel waiter. Or a nurse. “What, uh, what sort of a house is it, sir? And how many staff?”

“Big house,” Stark said. “Small staff. It’s, uh…a lot of things are automated. There’s the butler, Jarvis. And two others. Plus some…cleaners, and hopefully you.”

That didn’t sound so bad. “How many in the household, if I may ask, sir?” If he was as much of a libertine as Rogers said, there probably wasn’t a wife or children.

“Six. The whole team—Steve’s and my team—live there. So that’s me, Steve, Bruce, Clint, Natasha, and Thor. Everyone has their own apartments; I’m thinking you’d mainly be responsible for the common areas.”

Thomas wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly—but he supposed six wasn’t unreasonable. For a butler, and underbutler, two footmen, and some cleaners. He noticed Stark hadn’t said anything about a cook, but maybe he just hadn’t mentioned her. Or perhaps the butler cooked.

Taking a slip of paper from a pocket, Stark handed it across to him, saying, “Salary quote. Top number is in today’s US dollars, which probably doesn’t make much sense to you. Bottom two are adjusted for inflation and converted into British pounds—it works out a little bit differently depending on which you do first, the adjustment or the conversion. But it should give you the idea.”

It did, and it added up to a considerable increase over what Thomas had gotten at Downton. “And is it a live-in position, sir?” If he had to get room and board out of it, that would account for the difference. 

“Oh, yeah. There’s a nice apartment that goes with it.”

“When would you like me to start, sir?”

#

“Hey Steve,” Tony said, turning up in the gym just as he’d come back from his morning run and was settling in for some work on the heavy bag.

“Yeah?”

“You know how Thomas is coming to work here?”

“Yeah.” All yesterday afternoon and evening, Tony had been bouncing off the walls bragging about his new time travelling butler. 

“It occurs to me that, when I was offering him the job, I may have said one or two things that were, in context, slightly misleading.”

Steve caught the bag’s backswing, stilled it, and turned to face Tony. “What did you lie to him about?”

“Technically, it wasn’t a lie.”

Steve just looked at him.

“OK. Well. He asked about what other staff I had. So I told him about JARVIS , and U and DUM-E, and the cleaning bots.” 

“Good….”

“The thing is, I never actually _said_ that they weren’t human beings. So he might have assumed they are.”

Steve closed his eyes briefly. “You know he’s probably thinking U and DUM-E are two Chinese guys.”

“Actually, I didn’t mention their names. Just JARVIS’s.”

“You thought you’d just _spring_ them on him?” Steve asked. 

“I thought if I made it sound too weird, he’d say no,” Tony explained. “But you’re absolutely right; we shouldn’t spring it on him.”

“I agree.”

“And you guys really seemed to hit it off the other day.”

“Tony….” Steve knew what was coming.

“And you like JARVIS and the bots, now that you’ve gotten to know them.”

Steve didn’t answer. He was going to make Tony actually ask, in words.

“So I was thinking, maybe you could explain everything to him. Just so he knows what to expect when he gets here.”

“You were thinking that,” Steve said.

“Uh-huh,” said Tony brightly. “I bet he’d like that. Having the AI butler and the robots explained by somebody else from the past. I might not be able to dumb—to make it clear enough.”

Shaking his head, Steve turned back to the bag. “Let me know when.”

#

Thomas sat at a table in the mess, looking at a magazine. One of the crewmembers—Technical Specialist “Call me Jean” Ames—had lent it to him because it had an article on his new employer. Well, he supposed it could be called an article—there didn’t seem to be more text than would make up a paragraph, though it was spread over several pages. 

He wondered, sometimes, if the future-people didn’t read. This magazine was the first printed matter he’d seen, other than the materials prepared specially for him and Steve Rogers, and it was mostly pictures, all in color and most of them shocking.

The one his eye kept returning to featured Mr. Stark, bare-chested, standing between two women in what he eventually decided must be bathing-dresses, since all three were posed in front of a swimming bath. Mr. Stark wore only drawers—and very brief ones at that—which clung tightly, exposing the bulge of his…person. The women’s costumes consisted of no more fabric than his, though it was disposed differently across their bodies. 

It was the second-most obscene thing he’d ever seen in his life—the first being a French postcard which was the prized possession of one of his fellow orderlies in the war, featuring a women dressed only in stockings. Thomas couldn’t believe he was sitting here looking at it in _public_ , nor that it had been lent to him by a woman. As far as he could tell, the publication was not intended as pornography—it seemed to be mostly a film-star magazine, but also had items on singers, something called a “TV Chef,” a duck that had been fitted with a prosthetic leg, and a woman who, after being operated on for a form of cancer that ought to have been unmentionable in polite company, had developed a line of skin creams. 

The feature on Mr. Stark celebrated the occasion of his being awarded the title “Sexiest man alive.” Thomas was not a complete stranger to film star magazines’ celebrating the stars’ sex appeal, but they usually euphemized it as “It” or, at worst, “S.A.” 

As far as his future employer’s habits, he could have wished for the article to be more informative. When he did manage to tear his eyes away from the obscene photograph, he read that Mr. Stark was one of the richest men in the world and owner of “Superstar tech company Stark Industries.” What exactly the company made or did was not specified. Other photographs showed Stark in, variously, his flying suit of armour, a rather sharply-cut business suit with no necktie, a dinner jacket (at a film premiere, in the company of another scantily-dressed woman), and in an undershirt and workman’s trousers (leaning over the bonnet of what Thomas eventually decided must be an automobile, holding a wrench and artistically smudged with motor oil). The dinner jacket photograph was certainly the most _appropriate_ , but he found his eye most drawn—after the swimming costume one—to the photograph with the car. 

In all of the photographs, the glowing blue pendant-or-something was plainly visible, either through his clothing or…not, in the case of the poolside image. That photograph made clear that it was not suspended on any kind of chain—in fact, it seemed to be attached directly to the skin of Mr. Stark’s chest, though Thomas was at a loss to imagine how or why. The remaining text—nearly as skimpy as the bathing costumes—shed no light on the subject, though it did identify Mr. Stark as a “playboy,” “philanthropist,” “MIT alum” and “Avenger.” Thomas felt that he fully understood two and a half of those descriptors—playboy and philanthropist were clear enough, and “alum” was probably an abbreviation for “alumnus.” “MIT” might, perhaps, be a school or university. As for “Avenger,” he knew what the word meant, but there was no hint given as to what Mr. Stark avenged, or why it was important. 

Giving up on the subject for the moment, Thomas turned his attention to the feature that displayed the runners-up for the “Sexiest Man Alive” title. After some surreptitious consideration, he was forced to conclude that the judges had chosen fairly, though his future employer had faced stiff competition. He also wondered where more magazines of this type might be obtained, and if it would look funny for a man to buy one. 

He flipped hastily back to the article on Mr. Stark when Rogers joined him at his table. Unfortunately, that put the swimming costume photo right where he couldn’t avoid looking at it. Perhaps he should have pretended to be reading about the duck. 

“Reading up on Tony, I see,” Rogers said cheerfully.

“Yes. Er. One of the crewwomen lent it to me.” He wondered if he ought to call Rogers “sir” now. He was one of the household at Thomas’s new place. But—well, he was sort of like _Branson_ , wasn’t he? And Thomas hadn’t started his job yet—they had decided on a week from today, so as to give Dr. Hughes a little more time for her acclimatization plans. 

Rogers glanced at the magazine. “What is that, People? I know it doesn’t look like it, but it’s a perfectly respectable magazine.”

“What is a ‘supermodel’?” Thomas asked. That was how the two women in the improbable bathing dresses were described; he could at least pretend to have been looking at them.

“A model is a woman who has her picture taken for a living,” Rogers explained. “’Super’ means she’s famous for it.”

“I see,” Thomas said, though he wasn’t sure he did. 

“You won’t be seeing those two hanging around the house,” Rogers went on. “Well—that’s the Malibu house, anyway, I think. There are always a lot of models and movie stars at Tony’s parties, but they’re not really close friends.”

Thomas nodded. He was glad of that, at least. “How many houses does he maintain?”

“At least three,” Rogers said. “Malibu, the Tower in Manhattan, and the family place on Long Island. He never goes to the Long Island one. There’s a place in Tuscany he goes, too, but he might rent that one. I’m not sure.”

Three or four houses was not completely unreasonable, for an American millionaire—Lord Grantham had never maintained more than two, Downton and the London house, but Lady Grantham’s American family had three. “I’m not sure he said which one I’ve been engaged to work in.”

“The Tower,” Rogers said. “Stark Tower, but he’s thinking of changing it to Avengers Tower.”

“What…does ‘Avenger’ mean something different now?”

“Oh—yeah, it’s the code name for our SHIELD team. The Avengers Initiative. I don’t really know why it’s called that.” 

“I thought code names were usually…secret,” Thomas pointed out. “It’s in this magazine.”

“Yeah. Tony doesn’t really…do secret.” Changing the subject swiftly, he went on, “So you’re finding out a little bit more about Tony and all of us before you come. That’s good. There are a couple of things I thought I’d better fill you in on. So you know what to expect.”

“Yes?” There was something Thomas didn’t quite like about Rogers’s tone. It sounded like he was about to be warned off—and considering he hadn’t done anything since he’d come to this century, that seemed a little unfair. 

“Tony told you about, uh, Jarvis. And the others.”

Thomas nodded. “He did.” 

“Yeah. He left out one important detail.”

Having no idea what it could possibly be, Thomas waited.

“They aren’t exactly … _people_.”

“What?” He wouldn’t have been surprised, at this point, to learn that the staff was made up entirely of Esquimaux or African Pygmies, or that the butler was a woman, but he wasn’t sure what they could but if not _people_. Unless… “Are they spacemen, then?”

“No,” Rogers said. “Though that’s not a bad guess. And actually, Thor…I’d better tell you about the team, next. No, the…staff, are…have you ever heard of robots?”

“No,” Thomas said. The word didn’t ring even the faintest of bells. 

“I had a little bit of an advantage, there, I guess,” Rogers said. “There were stories about them, when I come from. Sort of…mechanical people.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. “Like clockwork?” He thought he’d seen a children’s story or two, about clockwork toys coming to life.

“Sort of. Only there’s…electricity involved somehow. They aren’t, uh…well, mostly they aren’t exactly real. There are movies and stuff about robots that look like human beings, and think and feel like human beings. And Tony…I think Tony watched a lot of those movies when he was a kid. And then when he was a…slightly bigger kid, he built two of his own. But they don’t look like people—they’re just sort of…arms on wheels. Here,” Rogers added, taking a small pad of paper out of his jacket pocket and sketching quickly, before sliding the paper across the table to him.

The sketch looked like a cantilevered lamp, attached to a rolling platform. “This is…one of my coworkers,” he said, thinking—hoping—that Rogers must be having a joke on him.

“That’s DUM-E. The other one’s called U; he looks pretty much the same. They’re both about so tall.” He held out his hand at shoulder height. “They mostly hang out in Tony’s workshop. They’re kind of…well, it’s hard to say how smart they are. Tony designed them to be able to learn, and they have personalities. Sort of. At least he thinks they do.”

So either his prospective employer was insane, or he was about to have two colleagues who were thinking, feeling, arms on wheels. Lovely. “He said there were Jarvis, two others, and some cleaners,” Thomas remembered. “These are the two others?”

“Yes. The cleaners are also robots. Little guys, mostly. He has carpet sweepers, and floor scrubbers, and some that are supposed to do the dusting, but they tend to break things. They come out of hatches in the wall and roll around on the floor, on their own, cleaning things up. Those ones don’t have names.”

That prospect didn’t bother Thomas quite so much—he never paid much attention to housemaids anyway, so what difference did it make if they were replaced by electrical-clockwork things? As long as he wasn’t the one scrubbing the floors, he didn’t mind. “And Jarvis? He’s a robot as well, is he?”

“Not exactly. He’s an Artificial Intelligence. Sort of like…well, it’s not much like anything, really. Have you ever heard of a calculating engine?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either, before I met Tony. He says they were first invented in the 19th century, but apparently nobody was interested. They’re sort of…machines that can do arithmetic. In _my_ war, they used them to break German codes. Then after the war they went on making ones to do other stuff. Different kinds of calculations, storing information, retrieving it, comparing it….”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Computers. I’ve just gotten to them in my book.” He didn’t entirely understand what they were, or why they were so important, but he hadn’t finished the chapter yet. “Miss Ames says they use some to steer this ship.”

“Yeah, they do. Jarvis is a little more advanced than that one. He can really…think. You’ll—when you meet him, he’s just a voice that comes out of the walls. But you can ask him anything.”

“And he’s a butler,” Thomas said. He was skeptical of how a voice that came out of the walls could be a butler.

“Sort of. I mean, Tony says he is. And he based his personality on his family’s real butler from when he was a kid. And he does…stuff. I mean, if you need something from the store—any store—you just tell him what and how fast you need it, and he orders it. And he keeps track of everything Tony owns and where it is, in which house. If you want to get a message to somebody else in the house, you just tell him and he tells them. Like that. And he sends out the cleaning robots, and tells you about phone calls and visitors. I mean…I don’t really _know_ what a butler does, except what I’ve seen in movies, but he seems kind of…butler-ish.” 

“Ordering and inventorying, organizing the other staff, and announcing visitors are big parts of it,” Thomas admitted. “I take it he doesn’t wait at table. Being a voice in the walls.”

“Right. So I bet he’ll be able to come up with plenty of stuff for you to do,” Rogers added. “Since he doesn’t have hands. Or any other body parts.”

Well, at least that meant he wouldn’t have to deal with an immediate superior who walked around half-dressed. Granted, the two robots appeared to roll around entirely unclothed, but since they looked like lamps, Thomas didn’t think he would be bothered by that. 

Rogers went on, “I know it sounds weird. But Jarvis is pretty easy to get used to, and the other guys are…well, it helps to think of them sort of like dogs. They’re real friendly, and they try to do what Tony tells them, but they don’t always understand. So that’s…I mean, if you still want the job, that’s what you’re getting into.”

“I’m sure I can manage,” Thomas said. It was better than staying on this ship until Dr. Hughes was ready to let him go, and then going to school for God knew how long. The situation had seemed almost too good to be true—Mr. Stark’s obvious eccentricity not seeming like quite a severe enough defect to make up for all of the other aspects that seemed entirely suitable. Now that he knew what the catch was, he almost felt better about it. “But thank you for telling me. I’m sure there will be plenty of other surprises in store.”

“Yeah,” Rogers said. “You never know what’s going to happen next, at the Tower.”

#

“Oh, good, you’re all here,” Tony said, coming into the TV room on the Avengers’ common floor. 

“You said that it was a house meeting,” Thor pointed out.

Natasha added, “Since you usually have to be dragged in kicking and screaming when Steve calls one, we thought we’d come for the novelty value.”

That was unfair; he’d only actually kicked and screamed once. After that he’d decided to submit with quiet dignity when Natasha showed up in his workshop and started counting to three. “As many of you know,” he went on, “our new, time-traveling butler is coming next week.”

“We know,” Bruce said. “You were singing about it at dinner last night.”

“I particularly liked the dance,” Natasha added. 

Tony began to realize that Steve had a point about comments from the peanut gallery not being funny when one was trying to conduct a house meeting. “Before he gets here, I wanted to go over a few points. One. Just because we have an under-butler now—and he has hands—does not mean we all have an excuse to act like pigs.”

“So we should avoid things like, say, leaving our socks on the coffee table,” Steve suggested. 

“Or taking bowls of cereal into our workshop and forgetting to eat them, or return them to the kitchen, until they’ve turned into mold-infused cement,” Bruce offered.

“Or becoming so inebriated that we fail to recognize when the lid of the toilet is closed,” Thor said.

“That was _one time_ ,” Tony protested. “And you guys do stuff too. Bruce, you’re always leaving your…disgusting baskets of twigs and goop on the counter.”

“You mean my tea leaves?” Bruce asked.

“My description was much more evocative,” Tony answered.

“…fine. I’ll be careful not to do that,” Bruce said. 

“Good! And I’m sure we can all be a little bit more careful about things like that. Also. Speaking of the kitchen. Natasha, as much as we all love it when you come down for a midnight snack in a big t-shirt and panties, maybe for the next couple of weeks or so, you could put something else on. Just so we don’t shock the guy from 1921. I’ve ordered you a robe. And then I sent that one back and ordered you a less sexy robe. Should be here Monday.”

“Seriously, Stark?” Natasha asked.

“No, I didn’t send back the sexy one; I figured I’d save it for your birthday. Or mine.”

“You never told Natasha to put on clothes for _me_ ,” Steve pointed out. 

“You toured the country with an elite team of showgirls,” Tony reminded him. “If you hadn’t already seen all there is to see, you needed all the help you could get.”

“Is everyone else supposed to dress up to avoid offending the new guy, or am I the only one who has to act like I’m ashamed of my body?” Natasha asked.

“Nobody should be ashamed of their body! We all have great bodies. I enjoy looking at all of them,” Tony said. 

“Ew,” said Bruce. 

“But now that you mention it, maybe the rest of us should try not to walk around in our boxers, either. Down here, I mean. He’s going in the guest apartment on this floor, so maybe just make this whole area a pants-mandatory zone.”

“Tony,” Steve said. 

“Yes?”

“I seem to remember a time, not too long ago, where someone proposed a ‘pants required’ dress code for team meals. And I recall someone else goose-stepping and calling the party of the first part ‘mein fuehrer.’ JARVIS, could you access the security recordings and remind us who those two people were?”

“Certainly. It appears that the party of the first part, as you put it, was yourself, Captain Rogers, and the party of the second part was none other than Mr. Stark.”

“Just checking,” Steve said. “And—seriously, Tony, I think you’re probably right, about none of us coming into the common areas in our underwear. But it’s probably even _more_ important that you try not to openly leer at him. Or even make jokes about leering at him.”

“Oh, is the new guy hot?” Natasha asked.

“Very,” said Tony. “And I was coming to that—you’re getting my agenda items all out of order.” 

“You made an agenda?” Bruce asked. 

“Yes!” He took out his phone, brought up his notes for the meeting, and showed it to Bruce. 

Bruce took the phone, moved it slightly further away from his face, and read, “‘House meeting Agenda. 1. Not acting like pigs. 2. Natasha wearing clothes. 3. Keeping the noise down. 4. Not telling him I smoke pole.’” Bruce looked up from the phone. “Really, Tony?”

Tony explained helpfully, “Pole is a metaphor for—”

“We know what it’s a metaphor for,” Bruce interrupted. Looking back at the phone, he continued, “‘5. Questions??’ There are two question marks,” he added. “Tony, like Steve said, I think these are all really great points. I’m just…surprised you’re the one making them. What brought on all this…concern?”

“Do you have _any_ idea how hard it is to keep a butler when you’re…well, _me_? The year before I got JARVIS up and running, I went through—how many was it, J?”

“Seven, sir. Eight if you count the nanny that then-Captain Rhodes sent as a joke.”

“Yeah, she actually lasted longer than some of the butlers,” Tony mused. “See,” he explained to the others, “People tend to be drawn to the idea of being a butler because they like having things just so. And I, on the other hand, am….”

“A one-man force for chaos?” Bruce suggested. 

Tony would have put it differently—something about the pace of his genius appearing incoherent to lesser minds, but…. “Yeah. That.” 

“I thought you just thought a time-traveling butler would be cool,” Clint spoke up, fulfilling his quota of one contribution per meeting. 

“That too, _obviously_ ,” Tony said. “But I’m thinking, the time-travel thing is going to cause so much static, that by the time he realizes how much of the weirdness is just _me_ , he’ll be used to it.” He paused. “Also, he’s really hot. Most butlers now-a-days, either they’re really old guys, or they look like they ought to be a tennis pro named Skip. This guy is young and hot, but in a butlery way.”

“You really need to not say that to him,” Steve warned. “He probably thinks homosexuality is a sin and a mental illness. And it could be considered sexual harassment.”

“I _know_ ,” Tony said. “I’m getting it out of my system. So, guys? Can we do these four, simple little things, so we can keep our butler?”

#

In the few days preceding his departure from the Helicarrier, Thomas was finally given permission to travel between his quarters and the mess without an escort. On his first solo expedition, he was surprised to find that what had looked like smoked-glass panels in various corners of the room were now lit up and displaying brightly colored moving pictures. And making a hell of a racket, competing with one another as one showed a sporting event of some kind, another a newsreel, and a third a cartoon. Nearly everyone in the room had their eyes fixed to one or another of the screens; one of the crewmen that Thomas knew managed to tear his away long enough to explain that this was television, adding, “Doc Hughes has been making us turn it off when we know you’re coming.”

Suddenly, the explanation in the Orientation Materials made a great deal more sense. He had no idea why they had said it was like “radio” with pictures, when it was, quite obviously, cinema with sound, but at least things were beginning to fall into place now. He did find that his acquaintances among the crew were much less willing to answer his questions when the television was playing, until he worked out that conversation was encouraged only when the picture abruptly changed to a short film about the merits of a particular make of automobile or brand of washing powder. These short items, while just as informative to Thomas as the main programmes, were apparently advertising matter, and of no interest to anyone else. 

He took to frequenting the mess at odd hours, when often only one television was playing, or they were all showing the same programme. When all three were showing something different, he had trouble sorting out which sounds went with the picture he was looking at. The other seemed to manage, but Thomas supposed it took practice. 

His study of the Orientation Materials fell by the wayside. He had worked his way through “History” and dipped into the most relevant bits of “Daily Life” and “Technology,” but he felt he was getting a fair enough idea of “Society” from his study of television. When he tired of that and wanted to relax, he went back to his room and read a real book. Rogers, explaining that when he felt out of place, he found it comforting to read or listen to something from his own time that was still enjoyed today, had given him a present of several books that had been published in the early 1920’s and were still in print. He had a couple by PG Wodehouse, who Thomas knew as a writer of funny little things for _The Strand_ ; a murder mystery written by someone called Agatha Christie, who had apparently gone on to write dozens more; a new one by Virginia Woolf; and an American one called _The Great Gatsby_ , which Rogers said defined how many people today thought about the 1920’s.

One day, as he was nearing the point of frustration with television news, and considering going back to his room to find out just who had killed Roger Ackroyd, a woman approached his table, dressed in what both the orientation materials and television had persuaded him really was considered conservative business attire. “Thomas?” she asked. At his nod, she extended her hand. “I’m Pepper Potts. CEO of Stark Industries, and Tony’s…friend.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Thomas said, standing. He hadn’t done so at first because he’d gathered that men no longer stood in the presence of a lady as a matter of course, but since she was a friend of Mr. Stark and…something or other to do with his company, the gesture seemed warranted.

“Thanks,” she said, sitting. “Now, since Tony’s running your employment through the company, there are some HR things to go over. And I thought I’d just come myself, because—well, I survived being his PA for years. I might be able to tell you a thing or two.”

“PA, ma’am?” Thomas asked, then wondered if he ought to have gone with “Miss.” And if the question was an impertinent one. Perhaps he ought to have asked about “HR” instead. Or neither. 

“Please, call me Pepper. PA is personal assistant. Sort of like a personal secretary, but I also ran errands, made sure he got places on time, that kind of thing. I focus on the company now, and believe me, it’s a lot easier.” She rummaged in a sort of handbag or briefcase and came out with a folder. “I have everything in hard copy, since that’s probably easier for you. Tony already told you about the salary, he said.”

“Yes. It’s…generous.”

“Pay is bi-weekly. Tony went ahead and set up—well, I’m sure he had Jarvis set up—an account for you at the bank he uses, so we’ll have your direct deposit ready to go in time for your first check, and your cards and everything will be at the Tower when you get there.”

“Ah,” Thomas said. 

“Sorry—what part of that did you have trouble with?”

“Well, I know what a bank is, miss.”

She explained that his pay would be sent directly to the bank every two weeks. The “cards and everything” were credit and debit cards, which he’d already read about in “Daily Life,” so he knew—at least in theory—how to use them to buy things or to get actual money from machines that he was assured were quite easy to find. Thomas signed a form consenting to have his pay handled in this manner. Next, Ms. Potts discussed his health plan, which he eventually understood was a form of insurance. Unlike, say, fire insurance, its purpose was not to pay him a lump sum if he ceased to be healthy, but rather to pay the doctor’s bills if he incurred any. Lord Grantham had always paid the doctor bills for any of the servants who were ill, so there was nothing strange about that to Thomas, though he was left unsure why it had to be explained to him in advance of need and in so much detail. 

She handed him a brightly-colored leaflet, saying, “This has all the numbers to call if you have questions or to find a provider, but really you can just ask Jarvis. The second-to-last thing is your retirement plan.”

The retirement plan, once Thomas understood it, seemed like a terrific idea. In the system he was used to, he would put money aside towards his eventual old age, doing his best not to lose it to black market speculation or similar misadventure, and when he became too old or sick to work, his last employer might, if he felt like it, provide him with some kind of pension or annuity, the amount—or whether it existed at all—to be determined based on how much the employer liked him and how much cash he had going spare. If Thomas had been fortunate enough to remain at Downton for his entire career, he thought it likely that the answers to both of those variables would be “not very much.” Under the Stark Industries plan, they’d put aside a bit of money that came out of the salary he’d been quoted, and another bit extra, every two weeks for as long as he kept working. The only drawback was that he couldn’t get it out of the bank before he was sixty-five. Which would at least prevent him from losing it all doing something stupid. “And I still get it even if I’m not working for Mr. Stark anymore by then?” he asked, just to make sure he’d understood correctly.

“Right. It’s 100% portable,” Ms. Potts said. So he signed his name agreeing to that, and then she said, “The last item is the sign-on bonus. It comes as Stark Industries stock, currently valued at….” She quoted a figure that would have accommodated Downton’s ordinary household expenses for the better part of a year. 

“What, ah, what’s that for?” he asked.

“It’s standard for anyone who works closely with Tony. We call it a sign-on bonus, but you have to make it through your first 30 days—calendar days—before you can collect it. It’s meant to sort of…encourage you not to run away in terror the second day.” 

“Does that happen often?”

“Let me put it this way. Of his last twelve PAs, three collected their sign-on bonus. Two of them quit on day 31, and the third was me.”

“Ah.” For the first time, Thomas began to wonder if he had made a mistake. He’d thought Mr. Stark seemed all right—mad, but all right—but he was not the world’s best judge of character. “Is he violent?”

“What? No, God no. I mean, unless you’re trying to take over the world or a terrorist or something. He’s just, um…well, he’s very smart.”

Thomas knew that, to Americans, “smart” meant “clever,” not “well dressed.” He nodded, not quite understanding why that was a problem.

“Ever since he was a teenager, he’s always been the smartest person in the room, and the richest person in the room, and usually the most attractive person in the room. And that isn’t enough for him. He’s always doing something crazy to get attention. And he doesn’t always think of other people—don’t get me wrong, he can be very sweet when he does make an effort…but a lot of the time he doesn’t. He always has some kind of scheme or project that’s more important. I mean, case in point. The night he found you, he was in London getting an award for helping refugees. But he decided to fly out and look at the Temporal Disturbance—which for all he knew could have _killed_ him—because he was bored. That’s the kind of thing he does. He doesn’t think things through.”

Still at a loss as to why any of that made Mr. Stark a particularly difficult employer—Thomas was quite used to not being thought of, and to the whims of the rich—he asked, “Is he likely to suddenly decide he doesn’t need an under-butler anymore?”

“No—I mean, I’m sure he’ll lose interest in the novelty of a time-traveling butler before long, but he won’t fire you. It’s just hard to keep up with the constantly changing enthusiasms. And when he asks you to do something—like plan a party, or schedule a trip, or look for a racehorse he can buy—you never know whether he’s going to call you every fifteen minutes asking for updates, or disappear into his workshop for three days and forget about the whole thing by the time he comes out.” She mused, “We still have the racehorse, but he’s never even looked at it.”

Thomas had a vision of a dining room full of dinner guests, and Mr. Stark either never showing up at all, or showing up in his undershirt and smudges of motor oil. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. “I can see how that would be…frustrating.”

“That’s exactly what it is. He doesn’t mean to be infuriating. He just is. But,” she added on a more hopeful note, “you’ll be running the house—helping Jarvis run the house—for all of the Avengers. That should dilute the—Tony effect. If you put a lot of effort into something for the team, _someone_ will appreciate it. Or Steve or Bruce will at least pretend to.”

Yes—they could explain Mr. Stark’s absence or unusual mode of dress to the hypothetical dining room full of guests. Thomas wouldn’t have to. “I expect I’ll manage well enough, then.” Really, as long as Mr. Stark wasn’t the sort of man who threw boots at his valet or pots of jam at his butler when thwarted, he expected he’d be all right.


	2. The Tower

“The taxi has just arrived, sir,” JARVIS announced. 

“Oh!” Tony looked around frantically, seeing Bruce reading a scientific journal—on paper, for some reason—and Clint playing _Grand Theft Auto_ while Natasha kibitzed. “Everybody look natural.”

“It isn’t a surprise party,” Natasha pointed out dryly. 

“Maybe it should be,” Tony said worriedly. “I mean, not a _surprise_ , but—maybe there should be coffee or something. And croissants.” He looked around again, as if expecting these items to materialize. 

JARVIS said, “I find no indication that welcoming domestic staff with a _brunch reception_ was customary in the 1920’s.”

“Coffee and croissants aren’t really brunch,” Tony objected. “ More like—elevenses. That’s a British thing, isn’t it? Or is it just hobbits and Paddington Bear?”

“I do believe that the fruit basket in his apartment will be sufficient, sir,” JARVIS insisted. 

It would almost have to be, since there was no time for anything else. “You did get the one with the marmalade in it,” Tony said. “And the tea. Right?”

“Yes, sir. Marmalade, tea, and a Starkphone. Also fruit.”

#

Thomas could remember being more nervous in his life, but only in situations involving either the war or Jimmy Kent. Rogers—Captain Rogers, he supposed he ought to think of him—had been kind enough to come fetch him from SHIELD’s New York offices, where he’d been transported by aeroplane as part of what was apparently a scheduled transfer of personnel. Thomas had thought, beforehand, that he could probably manage locating and riding in a taxicab on his own—though he’d had some doubts as to how he would pay for it—but once he saw the city streets, which seethed with both pedestrian and automotive traffic, both of which were shouted at with enthusiasm and obscenity by the driver, he was just as glad to have an escort. 

The driver also engaged in a lengthy argument with himself over which route to take—he was most definitely _not_ speaking into one of the tiny wireless telephones, because he took both parts in the argument. Left to himself, Thomas might have felt it necessary to take some part in the conversation, but since Captain Rogers was content to ignore him, he did as well. Instead, Captain Rogers narrated sites of interest as they passed: buildings that had been in place when he was frozen or that hadn’t, ones he seemed to think Thomas should have heard of, and, when they neared the Tower at last, the nearest station of the underground railway, which Rogers called the “Good old subway,” and professed himself glad still existed. “Even now, it’s faster than driving for anywhere in Manhattan, and a lot of the five boroughs, too.”

The cab reached its destination, about ten minutes after Rogers had pointed out the station that he said was a five-minute walk from the Tower. The building itself seemed to be made almost entirely of glass, and Thomas made an effort not to gawk up at it as Rogers paid the cabbie. Rogers then showed Thomas how to get his luggage—a sort of duffle bag, supplied by SHIELD and only half-full—out of the boot. Apparently cab drivers did not help you with your bags in the 21st century. 

Then they went into what struck Thomas as a fairly plain-looking lobby, for such a large building, belonging to one of the richest men in the world. The floor might have been marble, but there were no chandeliers in evidence, nor statuary or even a fireplace. Ornament was confined mostly to a few large ferns. Captain Rogers was greeted, with a murmured, “Cap,” by a man dressed in some sort of uniform and sporting a holstered handgun at his waist. 

“Jerome,” Rogers said. “This is Thomas—Jarvis’s new assistant.”

“Good to meet you,” Jerome said, extending his hand. “Head of security. Not that you really need it, up at the top of the building.”

Thomas shook his hand, and considered himself fortunate that Mr. Jerome didn’t seem to expect a reply to that cryptic remark. 

As they walked on, Rogers explained, “Floors 2 through 82 are rented out as office space.” He seemed to be setting a course for a lift labeled, “Private—No Access.” As they approached, the doors opened soundlessly, despite the fact that there was no operator inside. “This is the express up to Tony’s private floors,” Rogers added as they boarded. “The very top—91 through 100—are his and Bruce’s labs.” 

“So the residence is—floors 83 through 90?” Thomas checked. That seemed like a lot, for him, a voice in the walls, and some robots. 

“Yeah,” Rogers said. “You’re on 89.”

The voice in the walls said, “Mr. Stark envisions—and I agree, that your duties will center on the Avengers’ common floor, which is also number eighty-nine.”

“That’s Jarvis,” Rogers said helpfully. 

Thomas glanced up at the ceiling, involuntarily. “Good to meet you, Mr. Jarvis.” Somehow, he hadn’t expected that his new superior would be in the lift. Though it did explain why there was no lift operator in evidence. Maybe.

“You as well, Mr. Barrow.”

It was reassuring, somehow, that the invisible butler had a perfectly normal accent—and knew he was supposed to be called “Mr. Barrow.” Maybe he’d be sensible in other ways, as well. 

Glowing numerals on the wall above the doors marked the lift’s progress; it rose very swiftly, coming to a smooth stop at number 89 in less than a minute. The doors opened immediately onto a space that Thomas was at a loss to characterize.

Closest to the lift door was a seating group, arranged facing one of the ubiquitous televisions, larger than any in the Helicarrier mess, and blaring more loudly. The sofa was occupied by two people, a man and woman Thomas had never seen before. Beyond that—across an expanse of creamy white carpet—was a pub counter, made recognizable by the array of liquor bottles displayed along shelves behind it. After that the flooring changed to blond wood, and there was a table made of glass, occupied by Mr. Stark and another stranger. And beyond _that_ was what Thomas’s study of magazine and television advertisements assured him was a _kitchen_ , though what business it had being in plain view of Mr. Stark and what he concluded must be the rest of the household, Thomas had no idea. 

Even worse than all this architectural topsy-turviness was that, upon their entrance, _Mr. Stark_ sprang to his feet, saying, “Thomas!” Darting over to them, he added, “And Steve. Hi, Steve.”

“Hi, Tony,” said Steve. Gesturing to Thomas, he said, “One time-traveling butler, as requested.”

“Awesome,” Mr. Stark said, rubbing his hands together. “Um, let’s see. I guess first you should meet everybody. That’s Clint and Nat.” 

The woman waved; the man—both hands occupied by some device Thomas couldn’t recognize—glanced away from the television screen for a fraction of a second and grunted, “Hey.” 

Thomas found nothing at all exceptionable in this reception—indeed, it seemed much more in line with the importance of the occasion and of, well, him, than did Mr. Stark’s enthusiasm—but he did hope he could find out which of the two was which before it mattered. 

“And here’s Bruce!” Mr. Stark continued with a flourish, indicating the man sitting at the glass table. 

He looked up. “Hello.”

Thomas nodded. “Sir.”

Mr. Stark looked at him oddly for a moment, and said “Wow,” before continuing, “And, of course—Jarvis!”

“We’ve already met, sir,” said the voice from the walls. “Would you like me to orient Mr. Barrow to his duties now?”

Thomas thought that a very reasonable suggestion, but his hopes of making a quick exit from what was very clearly the “upstairs” part of the house were dashed when Mr. Stark said, “Nah, I’ll show him around.”

So Thomas had little choice but to follow as his new employer personally conducted him on a tour of floor eighty-nine. He could only hope that Mr. Jarvis didn’t consider a substitute for his own orientation, since it left Thomas rather more disoriented than otherwise. Mr. Stark passed lightly over the sitting, bar, and dining areas, but did spend a little time on the kitchen, pointing out such features as the refrigerator, dish washer, and coffee maker. At this last, he said, “D’you want coffee?”

“Sir?” Thomas asked. 

“I think it makes tea, too,” Mr. Stark continued, riffling through a basket of …items that were next to the coffee machine. They looked like the little pots of artificial cream in the SHIELD mess, except bigger. 

“Terrible tea,” said Bruce, from the table. 

“How bad can it be?” Mr. Stark asked. Selecting one of the cream-pots from the basket, he flipped up part of the machine, and then bellowed, “ _What_ did I say about not acting like pigs? Who left this in here?”

“You did, sir,” said Jarvis. 

“Oh.” With a flurry of motion, Stark plucked one of the cream-pots out of the machine and threw it into a refuse container that was located on the opposite side of the room. “All you do,” he explained, apparently talking to Thomas now, “is put the pod in and close the lid. Put a cup here--” He leaned across Thomas to get one down from a cupboard—“And press the button. Voila. Tea.”

“That tastes mostly like coffee,” said Bruce. 

“D’you take sugar? I don’t know if we have any lemon. Might be some in the fruit basket.” 

A moment later, without having a clear idea of how any of it had happened, Thomas found himself holding a cup of tea that had been prepared and served—if you could call it that—by Mr. Stark. Unwilling to either drink it or put it down in his employer’s presence, Thomas was left to carry it with him for the rest of the tour. 

In addition to the large, open space already described, floor eighty-nine also had a room that Thomas, if pressed to venture a guess, would have called a dining room, but that Mr. Stark described as a briefing room; a library; a gymnasium, and a shooting gallery. Retracing their steps, Mr. Stark then took him down a different corridor, pointing at doors and saying, “Guest room, guest room, guest room, guest suite¸ and your apartment!” This last door, unlike the others, Mr. Stark actually opened. As with the tea, it happened too quickly for Thomas to react. “Have a look around, get settled,” Mr. Stark urged. “Then, uh…Jarvis will know what you should do next. Right, J?”

“I believe I have the situation in hand, sir,” said Jarvis.

“Great! Okay. You guys have fun.”

Thomas went in, and, as directed, had a look around. First came a sitting room, furnished with a sofa and two armchairs—which seemed excessive given there was only him to use it—and equipped with a television. Tucked into one corner of the room, with no intervening wall, was a miniature kitchen, with a small table and various appliances Thomas only partially recognized. 

“Mr. Jarvis?” he said hesitantly. Captain Rogers had said that Jarvis could be addressed from anywhere in the house….

“Yes, Mr. Barrow?”

“Is, um, is Mr. Stark expecting me to cook? Because I--” _Am not bloody Alfred_. “Would have to learn how first.”

“No, we had not anticipated that cooking would be part of your duties,” said Mr. Jarvis. “The kitchenette is provided in case you wish to fix anything for yourself.”

That, Thomas supposed he could manage—he had done in the war, after all, and the modern appliances were supposed to be quite easy to use. “I see. Thank you.”

“Mr. Stark wishes me to draw your attention to the fruit basket,” Jarvis added.

There was a basket of fruit sitting on the table. “Yes?” 

“I’ll tell him you’ve seen it.”

The rest of the apartment was equally nice—nicer than anything Thomas was used to, not that he was complaining. There was a large bedroom, with bed, dresser, and yet another television, and a bathroom with tub, sink, and toilet. Thomas spent a few minutes unpacking and arranging his few possessions—SHIELD-issued clothing, toothbrush, and orientation materials, and the books from Captain Rogers. 

The books, he decided to put in the sitting room—there was no bookshelf, but the stand that the television was on had a shelf under it. After he’d put the books away, Mr. Jarvis said, “You’re going to need more clothes.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder—he couldn’t seem to curb the impulse to look for Mr. Jarvis when he spoke, even though he knew perfectly well he wouldn’t see him. “I thought I might. Is there a livery?” He wasn’t sure if he hoped there was or not—if there was, there was no telling what it would look like. But he didn’t have any money to buy his own clothes with. 

“Not precisely,” Mr. Jarvis said, “but we can place an order with one of Mr. Stark’s regular suppliers.” 

The television switched on of its own accord—or rather, of Mr. Jarvis’s accord—and displayed a variety of suits, shirts, shoes, underclothes, neckties, and so on. Thomas spent an enthralled three-quarters of an hour making selections. 

“Is this how people buy clothes now, then?” he asked at one point. 

“It’s one way,” Mr. Jarvis answered, explaining that it was a bit like ordering goods out of a catalogue, except that the pictures and descriptions of the goods were sent to a screen from a computer. “I’ve taken the liberty of simplifying the process by showing only garments that seem consistent with your generally conservative tastes.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said. He’d wondered why he hadn’t seen anything particularly outlandish. All of the shirts had collars permanently sewn on, and the underwear seemed particularly stingy with regards to the amount of fabric provided, but apart from that there was nothing that would have drawn stares on a London street.

Well. Not that his underwear would have been seen on the street. 

After the clothes shopping, Mr. Jarvis explained how he did the household marketing. The grocers, apparently, also had computers that Jarvis could communicate with, and the lack of a cook was explained by the ready availability of food items that were supplied ready to eat, or nearly so, requiring only heating or similar simple preparation. Thomas would, apparently, be becoming quite familiar with these items, since there was no servants’ hall, either. Mr. Jarvis guided him in the selection of some items to stock his own kitchen, and indicated that they would be added to the order scheduled to be delivered that afternoon.

The rest of the day was similarly spent in the business of getting Thomas settled into the house. Mr. Jarvis provided him with brief biographies of each of the members of the household, including the information that “Clint” and “Nat” were, to him, “Mr. Barton” and “Ms. Romanoff,” respectively, and had been employed as assassins prior to joining the Avengers. “Bruce” was Doctor Banner, who turned out to be a man of surprising habits indeed—sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde type, though his alter ego was merely rather indiscriminately violent rather than actually evil. Mr. Jarvis assured Thomas that Dr. Banner had the problem quite under control, but nevertheless went over the precautions to be followed in the event that he began looking a little green. 

Captain Rogers, Thomas already knew, but he was surprised to learn that he was in command of the Avengers. “I thought Mr. Stark was in charge.”

“So does he,” said Mr. Jarvis dryly. “Nevertheless, Captain Rogers commands the team in the field, and Mr. Stark is occasionally persuaded to take his direction off of it, as well.”

“So who’s in charge of the house?” Thomas asked, practically.

“I am,” said Mr. Jarvis, and it was hard to argue with that.

The real surprise came when Mr. Jarvis introduced the final member of the household, who was—if Jarvis was to be believed, and Thomas didn’t see that he had much choice—an alien prince. “What do I call him, then? Your highness? Sire?”

“The others generally call him ‘Thor,’” said Mr. Jarvis. 

That wouldn’t do. “What do you call him?”

“Mr. Odinson.”

“Really?” That didn’t sound right, either. 

“I’m an American AI. I owe no allegiance to foreign princes or potentates.”

“You sound British,” Thomas pointed out. 

“Nevertheless, I was born in California, the brainchild of Mr. Stark—who, I’m sure you’ll agree, is most definitely an American.”

There was no arguing with that, either.

#

“How’s Thomas working out?” Tony inquired, leaning against the counter to watch as Bruce chopped vegetables for pasta sauce. He’d decided—after Jarvis told him so—that the most helpful thing he could do while Thomas was settling in was stay out of the way, so he had. 

“I haven’t actually seen him,” Bruce admitted. “But he put away the grocery order. Usually I have to do that.”

“Good! See, I told you we needed an under-butler.” Tony didn’t know if Bruce had actually argued with him on that point—on reflection, he thought not—but still. His first day, and he was being useful already.

“I’m sure it’ll make a big difference for me and Steve,” Bruce said. Tony recognized it as another dig at his housekeeping skills, but nobly did not respond. “Is he going to eat with us?” Bruce continued.

Tony wasn’t sure—original-recipe Jarvis would have eaten in the kitchen. “You should probably make enough for him, anyway.”

JARVIS add, “In the 1920’s, inviting an under-butler to dine with the household would have been considered eccentric at best. The servants would have eaten in the kitchen or servants’ hall.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t be comfortable,” Bruce mused. “On the other hand, I don’t think I’d be comfortable treating him like he’s some kind of leper.”

“Perhaps,” JARVIS suggested, “we should ask him.”

“Good idea!” Tony said. Of course, JARVIS would have good ideas—Tony had made him, after all.

In the end, Thomas came out of his room to set the table, and stayed to serve the meal. He actually carried the bowls of pasta and sauce around the table to each of them. Even Tony thought it was a little much, but he decided not to argue, if that was what Thomas wanted to do. For the rest of the meal, Thomas lurked in the kitchen, springing into action whenever anyone’s wine glass came close to being empty. 

When it was all over, Steve didn’t nag Tony about doing his share of the cleanup, because Thomas so obviously had it covered. As he retreated to the sofa, Tony heard Thomas ask, “Is that how they always eat, then? No courses or anything?”

“That,” said JARVIS, “was an unusually formal meal. If Dr. Banner doesn’t cook, they fix their own plates and eat in front of the television.”

“Good God,” said Thomas.

#

Thomas was jolted out of a restless sleep by Mr. Jarvis saying, “Mr. Barrow.”

“What?” The box with glowing numerals that he had been assured was a clock told him it was 4:23—in the morning, presumably, as it was still dark. 

“The Avengers have been summoned to respond to a situation in Florida. They will be assembling in the briefing room in fifteen minutes.”

Mr. Jarvis had mentioned, yesterday, that such things sometimes happened. He got out of bed quickly and reached for his clothes. “What do they need?”

“Coffee, to begin with.”

Thomas dressed in his old suit—his new ones had arrived a few hours after they’d been ordered, but he didn’t quite feel up to mastering their intricacies when he hadn’t properly woken up—and hurried to the kitchen. Drawing upon Mr. Stark’s demonstration of the coffee machine, and on Mr. Jarvis’s rather clearer instructions, he was soon producing cups of coffee, assembly-line fashion. He’d been planning on hunting up some sort of tray, to carry them into the briefing room once the household were in there, but instead, they each detoured by the kitchen on their way in, collecting their cups and adding cream and sugar, as desired, right there. 

To Dr. Banner, he provided a cup of tea, and an apology. “It’s out of the machine—I haven’t sorted out yet how to make proper tea here.” He quite agreed with that the tea was terrible, but if the kitchen was equipped with a kettle, he hadn’t seen it. 

“This is fine,” Dr. Banner said. “Thanks.”

“What now?” Thomas asked Jarvis after the household had all passed through the kitchen. “Will they have breakfast before they go, or get something on the—whatever it is they’re taking to Florida?”

“They’ll be taking a SHIELD jet,” Mr. Jarvis answered. “They won’t want to stop for breakfast—but we could pack something for them to take with them.”

So Thomas hastily threw together a breakfast hamper, including vacuum flasks of coffee and tea, the breadrolls with the holes in them (which he now knew were called “bagels”), some foil-wrapped objects that the packaging described as “breakfast bars,” and several oranges and bananas. There being no actual _hamper_ —at least that Thomas could find—he ended up loading everything into a shopping bag. “Is that all they need, then? What about…luggage? Weapons?” 

“Their go-bags are already packed and ready. Quinjet is four and a half minutes out. It will be landing on the penthouse terrace; you might go up to deliver the breakfast and see them off.”

So Thomas hurried upstairs to watch the aeroplane land. It was the same sort that he’d traveled from the Helicarrier in yesterday morning, which didn’t require a runway for takeoff or landing. As it was landing, Mr. Stark and the others came up; Thomas barely had time to hand over the breakfast parcel as they hurried toward it. 

“What’s this?” Mr. Stark asked.

“Breakfast, sir. More coffee and some…other things. For the journey.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Stark. “Awesome. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone—there’s a sea monster attacking Florida! But I’ll be in touch with Jarvis; he’ll keep you in the loop.”

Thomas answered, “Yes, sir,” but Mr. Stark was off and running for the ‘plane before he’d finished saying it.

It wasn’t quite half-past five when Thomas got back to his apartment, and Mr. Jarvis had said that seven-thirty or eight would be early enough to begin his work day, but it didn’t seem likely he’d get back to sleep quickly enough to make it worthwhile trying. He pottered around a bit, trying on his new clothes and fixing himself a rather better breakfast than the one he’d sent the Avengers off with—his cooking skills were quite adequate to the task of a soft-boiled egg and a sausage. 

The only thing missing was a newspaper, and when he remarked upon it, Mr. Jarvis directed him to pick up an object that was crammed into the fruit basket, half-hidden under some grapes. It proved to be one of the improbably-small telephones, and once Thomas figured out how to turn it on, Jarvis displayed a list of newspaper headlines on the small, television-like screen. “Am I even supposed to have this? It’s got Mr. Stark’s name on.”

“It’s a trademark, not a monogram,” Mr. Jarvis explained. “His company sells them. All residents of the Tower are provided with the latest model, whether they need it or not.”

Thomas shrugged. “All right, then. Does it do the articles, too, or just the headlines?”

“Yes, you need only touch one of the headlines to select it.”

Thomas essayed the experiment, and an article replaced the list of headlines. “How clever,” he said. 

“Mr. Stark certainly thinks so.”

“Does it only do the New York papers?” Thomas wondered. All of the headlines on display had to do with events he’d never heard of and didn’t care about. 

“No. What would you like? The _London Times_?”

“That’d be lovely.”

The _London Times_ headlines were just as incomprehensible as the New York ones, unfortunately, but he eventually found a feature on the birth of a baby to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which was familiar enough in concept to give a homelike air to the proceedings, despite the royals in question being completely unfamiliar to him.

After breakfast, Thomas’s first project of the morning was to familiarize himself with the equipment of the kitchen and dining areas, which he could now do without fear of interruption. He got in a little practice with the various electric appliances, and was able to locate what seemed to him to be a respectable amount of serving pieces. They were quite mismatched, with nothing approaching a full service of anything, but Mr. Jarvis informed him that that was the style, and filled his telephone with magazine pictures supporting this assertion. 

He was studying these for table-setting ideas when, quite to his surprise, the telephone _rang_ , sounding exactly like a proper telephone. After some quick instruction from Mr. Jarvis in how to answer it, he did so, saying, “Stark Tower, Mr. Barrow speaking.”

“Thomas!” said Mr. Stark. “Good, Jarvis said you were getting the hang of the Starkphone. Guess what?”

“Sir?”

“It turns out the sea monster is an _actual plesiosaur_. It must’ve come through another Spatio-Temporal Disturbance. Or, Temporal Disturbance, at least. We haven’t tracked it yet.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said, waiting for some hint as to what he was supposed to do with this information. 

“So we can’t just kill it,” Mr. Stark continued. “Every paleontologist in the world would want our heads on a platter—not to mention the animal-rights people. We’re going to have to capture it alive. None of us have any idea how we’re going to do it, so it’ll probably be at least a few days.”

“Ah. Yes, sir. I’m sure Mr. Jarvis and I can keep things in order here until you return.”

“Right, yeah, you guys hold down the fort. What? _Coming_.” These last two remarks seemed to be addressed to someone else. “Right, so, see you later.” With that, Mr. Stark rang off.

It turned out that Mr. Jarvis had similar feelings to those of Mr. Carson about taking advantage of the absence of the “family” to do some really thorough cleaning. Under the circumstances, Thomas didn’t mind much—it gave him the opportunity to figure out where things were and how they worked, without an audience. 

He met his other “colleagues,” as well. To his relief, the carpet-sweeping and floor scrubbing robots went about their duties with commendable efficiency, but after seeing the dusting one in action, he had to agree that it might be best if he assumed responsibility for that task, even if it _was_ a bit beneath the dignity of an under-butler. 

The two robots whose primary duty was to assist Mr. Stark in his inventing rooms were also pressed into service, to move furniture so that the cleaners could clean under and behind it. Mr. Jarvis thought it best that Thomas supervise them in this task, and it quickly became clear why. Despite their identical appearances, the two robots each managed to find their own unique form of incompetence. “You” tended to drop any object that he held for more than a few seconds, and “Dummy” apparently suffered from the misapprehension that anything worth doing was worth doing double—if not triple or quadruple. If asked to, say, move the sofa forward three feet, he’d move his end six, which usually led You to drop his. 

Thomas remarked to Mr. Jarvis that he didn’t think either of them would have lasted long as a footman under Mr. Carson, but the butler responded, with obvious reproach, “Mr. Stark was very young when he made them. He remains fond of them, despite their…deficiencies.”

In that case, Thomas decided, he’d better not say anything else against them. 

One task that was nearly absent from the schedule was silver-polishing. Through much searching, Thomas located a silver cocktail-shaker, a few other bar accessories, and a tray whose engraving proclaimed that it had been won by Maria Carbonell in an equitation competition. 

“We have some family silver at the Long Island house,” Mr. Jarvis explained. “But here and in Malibu, Mr. Stark prefers modern materials.”

Thomas also learned that what seemed to him a shocking lack of staff for such a large and wealthy household was filled by an assortment of outside services. He’d already seen how the role of cook was fulfilled by grocers and restaurants; similarly, the washing of towels and linens was done by a weekly service, and the care of good clothes was handled by a dry-cleaning firm (though not entirely to Thomas’s standards). Something called a “plant service” substituted for a gardener; a small army of men and women in coveralls appearing once a week to spend an hour or so tending to the plants, both indoors and on Mr. Stark’s terrace. Twice a week, a trio of maids (one of whom was a man) turned up to give the kitchen and bathrooms a good scrubbing, Mr. Stark having apparently not yet developed robots for that purpose. On a similar schedule, household refuse was collected from receptacles in the basement and carried away. 

Thomas’s role was envisioned to consist, in large part, of mediating between the household and these services. The various delivery personnel, for example, balked at bringing their charges any further than the lobby or, if pressed, the lift. Thomas was to meet them there, and transport the groceries the rest of the way to the kitchen, the clothes to the closets, and so on. Mr. Jarvis also directed him to stand nearby and look disapproving whenever it was noticed that the cleaning people or the plant people were being careless; apparently they lacked faith in Mr. Jarvis’s unseen supervision, and were moved to greater diligence under a human eye.

Other tasks that, at Downton, had consumed hours of labor for people dirtier and less important than Thomas were now done quickly and largely without mess, by machines. The washing of clothing—underclothes and the ubiquitous denim trousers, for example—was accomplished in a room off the gymnasium. One merely threw the items into the machine, poured washing powder on top, pressed a button, and walked away. Dishes were handled similarly, by another machine in the kitchen. Thomas might have thought that washing laundry and dishes was beneath the dignity of an under-butler, no matter how easy it was, but he was given to understand that, prior to his arrival, these machines had been operated by the household themselves. 

Not always happily, though—Mr. Stark in particular often failed to carry a process to its completion; he was quite known among the others for starting a batch of laundry and forgetting about it until someone else wanted the machine and found it full of wet cotton and mold, or for removing from the dishwashing machine only the dish or utensil he immediately wanted. The resulting gaps led the others to believe that the machine was receiving dirty dishes in preparation for a new cycle, which after a time led to a considerable shortage of dishes, as well as wastage of water and soap powder. 

But accepting deliveries and operating washing machines hardly seemed like the makings of a full work day, not even if he served a meal or two on the order of what he’d done the first night. Accordingly, as the household’s absence stretched into the second half of the week—with Mr. Stark calling nearly daily to say that it would be another day or two, at least—Thomas formed the plan of putting together a _proper_ dinner for the occasion of their return. 

He was a little concerned that Mr. Jarvis might be insulted by the suggestion, but Mr. Jarvis said that he would be glad to see Mr. Stark and the others “dine like civilized people. Lacking a physical body, there has been little I could do about it.”

Thomas had never before planned every detail of a dinner, but it was comforting to realize that Mr. Carson hadn’t, either. He always had Mrs. Patmore and her ladyship making most of the decisions on the menu, and his lordship meddling with the wine; it was really only the table settings that Mr. Carson did on his own. And Thomas knew all about those.

He decided that the most sensible place to start was with the food itself. Ready-made options were plentiful, but quality varied, and the selection was heavily weighted toward one-dish meals. Thomas was initially drawn toward one supermarket’s ready-made Beef Wellington—the picture shown on Thomas’s telephone looked quite like something Mrs. Patmore would serve. But Mr. Jarvis urged him to try it for himself beforehand, and the sample portion emerged from the microwave with soggy pastry and bearing very little resemblance to the picture on the package. The sauce was all right—if a bit salty—but as a whole, the dish was much less impressive than he hoped for. 

“It’s my understanding that the 6th Avenue establishment’s roast chicken, while somewhat less ambitious, has given uniform satisfaction,” Mr. Jarvis suggested. 

A trial run with that proved he was right, and it had the added advantage of coming already hot, so Thomas decided he’d serve that. For vegetables, he chose _haricots verts_ —another microwave oven item, but they seemed all right—and roasted new potatoes. The latter actually came raw, but all you had to do was dump them in a pan, mix a little packet of dried herbs with some oil, pour it over the potatoes, and shove the whole thing into the electric oven; Thomas thought he could manage it. For a starter, he found some nice spring pea soup—apparently the fact that it was summer was no obstacle—stuffed mushrooms, which came frozen and could go in the oven after the potatoes would do for a savory, and Mr. Jarvis assured him that adding a fish course would be excessive, so that just left the pudding. 

The same grocer that was supplying everything else also had an in-house patisserie, but Mr. Jarvis suggested he consult a specialist’s shop, explaining that they were, “Supposed to be very good, but they don’t have online ordering.”

So Thomas ventured out, the first time since his arrival that he’d gone further than the corner newsstand (which, as in his day, sold tobacco, though at jaw-dropping prices). He still had no hat, but Mr. Jarvis assured him that he would stand out more with one than without, and after a few minutes’ walk, Thomas had to agree. The flat, long-brimmed caps after the style of baseball players were ubiquitous, but the only _proper_ hat he saw was worn by a rather oily-looking youth, who was otherwise clad in short khaki trousers several sizes too large for him and an undershirt printed with what Thomas, after some consideration, decided really _was_ an obscene slogan. Since he was not the sort of person whose mode of dress Thomas would have liked to emulate, the sight largely reconciled him to the idea of going without a hat.

Apart from that, it was a pleasant walk, and Thomas found the pastry shop right where Mr. Jarvis said it would be. A glass case displayed cakes, tarts, and other confections every bit as elaborate as Mrs. Patmore might have served. The shop smelled richly of coffee, and Thomas was quite favorably impressed, right up until the moment when the girl staffing the counter put down her film-star magazine and said, “C’neyepyoo?”

“I beg your pardon?” Thomas said.

Slowly and distinctly, the girl said, “Can. I.” Here, she pointed to herself. “Help.” She waved her hands. “You.” She pointed to him.

“Oh. Yes. I’d like to try some pastries and, if they’re satisfactory, place an order for a dinner party.”

“We don’t give out free samples,” she informed him. “You can get the miniature pastries; it’s four-fifty for three.”

“I’m sure that’s fine,” Thomas said. It was less than a packet of cigarettes, anyway. And Mr. Jarvis had supplied him with the bank card attached to the household accounts, so it wasn’t even his money. “And I’ll have a coffee, as well.”

“You wanna eaditear?”

“Pardon?”

“You wanna eat it here?” she said more loudly, though she left out the hand gestures this time.

“I thought I might.” There were tables and chairs available, so it seemed unnecessary to stand on the sidewalk eating pastries.

“Then you got a sidown.”

“I’m sorry, I have a _what_?”

“Sit _down_. Jeeze, d’you speak English?”

“Yes, do you?”

“Siddown, anna waitress’ll kah’mepyou.”

“Does _she_ speak English?” Thomas wondered aloud as he looked for a place to sit down. 

He suspected the counter-girl did manage to hear and understand that remark, because further help was a very long time in coming. When it did, though, it proved to be well worth the wait, because it was a woman of more mature years who spoke distinctly despite the handicap of a noticeable New York accent. “Hello,” she said. “Destinee, at the counter, said she wasn’t quite sure whether you wanted to place a bakery order or dine here in the café.”

“I’m not entirely sure either,” Thomas answered. Sensing that he was now dealing with a figure of some authority in this establishment, he decided to present his credentials. “I’m the new under-butler at Stark Tower. We’re putting together a dinner, and we’re looking for a pastry supplier, so Mr. Jarvis, the butler, suggested I pop down and see how things were.”

“Oh,” she said. “Stark— _the_ Stark Tower?”

“I only know of the one,” Thomas said. “Miss…Destinee recommended the miniature pastries as a place to begin.”

“Yes! Yes, that’s, I’d be happy to bring you some of those. We offer miniatures of over twenty of our most popular pastries, though of course the full menu is more extensive. What sort of order did you have in mind, and when? For large orders and some of the specialty cakes, we require two days’ notice.”

“It’ll just be a small order—this time,” he added as her face fell. “Though if Mr. Stark and the others like it, who knows. And as for the date—well, that’s not certain, either. The household’s away, you see, dealing with a situation in Florida--”

“Oh! The dinosaur! I saw that on TV.”

“Plesiosaur. Yes. We want—Mr. Jarvis and I—to welcome them back from their labours with something rather nice, and unfortunately we’re not sure yet when we expect them. But it’s just going to be the household—the six of them—and perhaps one or two others, so we won’t need anything too elaborate.” Jarvis had suggested inviting Ms. Potts and the team’s SHIELD liaison, Mr. Coulson. “A choice of two puddings—desserts, I mean—should be ample. We had in mind one with chocolate and one with fruit.”

The woman—a Ms. Valieri—was eager to make recommendations. She brought samples well in excess of three—many of which appeared to have been cut from larger cakes and tarts, and not miniatures at all—and the figure of four-fifty was never mentioned again. Everything was absolutely delicious—Thomas was particularly taken with a sort of Italian-style éclair called a cannoli. Thomas eventually settled on those, and—since the cannoli were neither chocolate nor fruit—a cake that combined chocolate sponge with an orange filling. He put down a deposit, and they agreed he’d telephone when he knew when the order would be wanted.

The enjoyment of the occasion might have been marred by encountering the detestable Destinee again on his way out, but as he was leaving, he heard Ms. Valieri informing her that he was _Tony Stark’s actual butler_ and that if he came in again, she was to “spit your gum out and give him anything he wants!”

That, Thomas thought, was something like it. 

#

After luring the plesiosaur into the hastily-built ocean-side enclosure (attached to the equally-hastily endowed Stark Center for Prehistoric Sea Creatures), Tony swooped in to give it a pat on the neck, zipping away quickly before the beast could snap at him. Steve would scold him, but Tony really didn’t see how he could be expected to spend the better part of a week capturing a plesiosaur and _not_ pet it even once. 

He flew back to shore, where the rest of the Avengers and the newly-hired team of paleontologists and marine biologists were waiting. “There we go,” he said, landing and flipping up his suit visor. “One plesiosaur, no longer a danger itself or others.”

“You’re lucky it didn’t take your hand off,” Steve pointed out.

“Nah, we’re bros, me and Plessy.” 

“Plessy the Plesiosaur?” Bruce asked. “Creative.”

The SCPSC staff soon converged on him, talking excitedly about everything they hoped to learn from the plesiosaur, and asking questions about its movement and behavior. Tony promised to download copies of all of his suit recordings before he left. He was deeply tempted to stay and do a quick PhD in paleontology, with the hope of ending up with a tame plesiosaur at the end of it, but alas, he had responsibilities now, to Stark Industries and the Avengers. 

Still, he was feeling a little glum as he boarded the Quinjet home. He’d have flown himself—especially since there was no butler-packed breakfast to lure him aboard this time—but he’d gotten quite a bit of sea-spray in his joints in the course of luring the plesiosaur, so he thought he’d better give the armor a good going-over before he flew the whole way across the country. Having to make an emergency landing and ask everyone else to come back and get him would just be embarrassing.

“Cheer me up, JARVIS,” he requested, once they were underway. It was late, and everyone else had decided to get some sleep on the way back.

“Are you in need of cheering, sir?” JARVIS said from his phone.

“Well,” he pointed out, “when I was a kid— _before_ I wanted a robot best friend—I wanted a pet dinosaur. And I just gave one away.” He sighed. “Not that plesiosaurs are technically dinosaurs, but close enough.”

“I see,” said JARVIS, not entirely without sympathy. “Well, Mr. Barrow and I have been preparing a surprise for your return.”

“You have? What is it?”

“Do we need to review the _concept_ of a surprise, sir?”

“At least give me a hint. What category of surprise is it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Um…is it alive?” 

“No.” 

“Is it…something Pepper will yell at me for?”

“No—in fact, she’s planning to come.”

“Really?” Tony sat up straighter. “It isn’t an orgy, is it?”

“Do I need to dignify that with a response?”

“Not unless it’s ‘yes.’”

“It isn’t,” JARVIS informed him.

“That’s what I thought.” He considered. “Am I actually going to _like_ this surprise?”

“Considering the amount of effort Mr. Barrow has put into it, I am quite certain that you had _better_.”

The idea of a surprise _was_ slightly cheering—as was that of a butler who had lasted almost a week, even if Tony had been gone for most of it. Tony managed to doze off, surrounded by his slumbering teammates.

It was about four AM when they got home, Tony scrambled out first, and was greeted by Thomas as he left the landing pad. “Welcome home, sir.”

“Thanks—what?” he added. Thomas seemed to be waiting for something.

“Your bag, sir?”

“Well, if you insist,” Tony said, handing it over. The others, coming up behind him, got respectful nods, but Thomas didn’t offer to take _their_ bags. That was nice. Made him feel special. “What are you doing up?” Tony asked as they went inside.

Thomas didn’t answer directly. “What will you need? Supper? Drinks?” He glanced back at the others to include them in the offer.

“Before leaving Florida, we feasted lavishly at the Shack of Sea Food,” Thor informed him.

“But drinks sounds great,” Tony added. He thought the surprise might require them to be awake; most surprises did. “Sunrise drinks party! Who’s in?” He thought he might invent a new cocktail. What would go in a Plesiosaur Sunrise? 

“Sorry, Tony,” Bruce said with a yawn. “I’m going to bed.”

Most of the others concurred. Steve said, “I think I’m up for the day. I’m not having liquor for breakfast, but I’ll keep you company if you want.”

“Awesome,” Tony said, though it wasn’t quite as awesome as a team sunrise drinks party would have been. 

As they went inside, and the others peeled off for the elevator back to their floors, U rolled over. “Hey!” Tony said. “What are you doing up here?”

“U and DUM-E have been assisting Mr. Barrow and me with some projects,” JARVIS answered. 

“Cool.” U raised and lowered his claw, managing to look—much as Thomas had a moment ago—as though he were waiting for something. 

“He isn’t _wearing_ a coat,” Thomas muttered at the robot. “Does this have anything fragile in it, sir?” he asked, indicating Tony’s bag.

“Uh…nope,” Tony said.

Thomas put the strap of the bag in U’s claw. “You may take that to Mr. Stark’s room. Try not to drop it.” He turned toward the bar. “What will you have, sir?”

“I’m not sure yet. You’ve been teaching the bots to take people’s coats? How’s that going?” Tony couldn’t imagine it was going _well_ , but he was glad Thomas was making friends with them.

“Yes, sir. For parties. U is proving to be better at it than DUM-E.”

“I bet,” Tony said, looking over the bar. “Let’s see. Definitely rum. Let me guess, once DUM-E got the idea, he wouldn’t let you past him without giving him an item of clothing.”

“Exactly,” said Thomas. “Has it been tried before?”

“No, I just know the guys pretty well. Um….what fruit juice do we have?”

JARVIS said, “Here, orange and grapefruit. In the common area refrigerator, we also have guava and apricot nectar.”

“Ooh! Thomas, would you mind getting the guava juice?” A Plesiosaur Sunrise definitely had guava juice in it. 

“Certainly, sir.”

“You know,” Steve broke in, “Thomas might want to go to bed, too.”

Thomas looked faintly startled at the suggestion; for a millisecond, Tony wondered if JARVIS had told him about the orgy joke. But no, JARVIS wouldn’t have. “Oh, right,” Tony said. “Go ahead, if you want—I can get the guava juice myself.”

“No, it’s fine, sir. I am, as Captain Rogers said, up for the day.”

“Okay. Suit yourself.”

Thomas bustled off, presumably in search of guava juice, and Tony rounded up the other ingredients while JARVIS had the refrigerator crush some ice. Before he could start making decisions about the layering, he heard U beeping mournfully from the bedroom. Abandoning the rum and juices, he went in and found the robot tangled up in the strap of the duffle bag. “Oh, U,” Tony said, disentangling him. Once the bot was freed, he said, “ _You_ should go to bed. Go, workshop, charge, stay out of trouble. Shoo!”

U trundled off for the elevator.

Thomas returned a few moments later, bringing not only guava juice—which he’d poured from the carton into a pitcher for some reason—but a tray of little cocktail nibbles made of Triscuits, cheese, and ham. 

“That was quick,” Tony observed. At Thomas’s blank look, he added, “Those,” and flapped his hand at the plate.

“I had those ready, sir, in case anyone wanted them while the supper was being heated up. If anyone had wanted supper.”

“That was a nice idea,” Tony said. He hoped Thomas wasn’t offended that everyone else went to bed. “Look, Steve—snacks!” He stuffed one in his mouth as he started mixing the Plesiosaur Sunrise.

Unfortunately, the drink didn’t settle into pretty layers like a Tequila Sunrise—Tony realized belatedly that of course it wouldn’t; the specific gravities of orange, grapefruit, and guava juice were nearly identical. The citrus juices were just a _little_ bit denser, though, so there was a slight pinkening effect toward the top of the drink, and it tasted fine, so he decided it would have to do. Downing the experimental glass, he mixed two others, plus a Virgin Plesiosaur Sunrise for Steve, decanted the rest of the orange and grapefruit juices into the pitcher with the guava juice, and threw everything onto a tray—Mom’s old silver one, which was out for some reason—and said, “Somebody grab the snacks.”

“Sir?” Thomas said.

Steve edged past him and picked up the plate, explaining, “We have to go outside. Because it’s a sunrise drinks party, and Tony is committed to the theme.”

“Ah.” Before Tony could quite notice what was happening, Thomas had reached past _him_ and snaffled the drinks tray and was heading for the landing-pad door with it, followed closely by Steve. With a shrug, Tony picked up the bottle of rum and joined the parade. 

Most of the outside space was given over to landing pads of the Quinjet and Iron Man varieties, but Pepper and the decorator had ganged up on him to insist on a patio with a table and chairs and some plants and stuff. Tony sat down and accepted a drink from the tray Thomas was holding. “Oh—Steve, this one’s yours,” he said after he’d tasted it. He handed it over and took one of the others. Thomas was just sort of standing there, holding the tray in one hand, so Tony took the other one, too, and put it in his free hand, suggesting, “You can put the tray down and sit down now—we’re all here.”

“Sir?” Thomas looked down at the glass in his hand with evident confusion.

“Oh—did you want yours without rum, too? I guess I should have asked.”

“Ah. This is fine,” Thomas said, finally putting the tray down and sitting very gingerly on the edge of a chair. 

“Good.” Tony raised his glass. “To Plessy the Plesiosaur—long may he, or she, swim.” He clinked his glass against Steve’s and Thomas’s—he had to lean pretty far across the table for Thomas’s, since he didn’t seem to know how this was done. After they’d all sipped, he asked, “What do you think? Of the drink.”

“It’s not bad,” Steve said. 

“Yours is just juice,” Tony pointed out, and looked at Thomas.

“It’s—rather nice, actually, sir.”

“Isn’t it? It’s called a Plesiosaur Sunrise,” he added proudly. 

They sat. Tony nibbled at one of the Triscuit things. So did Steve. Thomas didn’t, even though he was hitting his Plesiosaur Sunrise pretty hard. Maybe he’d had enough when he was making them—that tended to happen to Tony a lot, when he made things that were edible. 

“So,” Tony said after a while. “JARVIS said there was a surprise?”

“Sir?” Thomas looked blanker than usual.

“JARVIS? Was I not supposed to know there was a surprise?” Or maybe there wasn’t one, and JARVIS had just made it up to cheer him up. That didn’t seem like something JARVIS would do, though.

“Owing to the awkward hour of your arrival, sir, the surprise has been scheduled for this evening.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Thomas said, sounding enlightened. “That. That’s a surprise?” he asked, looking up at the sky quizzically.

“Yes,” said JARVIS. “And, Mr. Barrow, I would not recommend that you imbibe more than one Plesiosaur Sunrise. Mr. Stark put approximately four and a half ounces of 150-proof rum in each one.”

Thomas sat his nearly-empty glass down very carefully. 

“Sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?” Tony asked. 

Steve pushed the plate of Triscuits closer to Thomas.

#

Thomas was not entirely without experience in drinking with his betters—there was the Duke of Crowborough, of course, and on one or two special occasions during his tenure as valet Lord Grantham had encouraged Thomas to join him in a drink in the dressing room. The cardinal rules were to limit one’s intake and watch one’s tongue. Now that Thomas had failed to observe the first, the second wasn’t looking particularly good, either. 

He’d decided, when it became clear that Mr. Stark was expecting him to drink one of the cocktails, that the best thing would be to polish it off quickly and then excuse himself to his duties. In retrospect, that had been a mistake. His head was spinning, and it seemed highly unlikely that he’d be able to stand up without staggering. 

“You should really warn people about your drinks,” Captain Rogers was saying to Mr. Stark. To Thomas, he went on, “Maybe you should make the next one plain juice. You knocked that one back pretty fast.”

“Yes,” he said faintly. “I did. Thank you,” he added as Captain Rogers poured some juice into his glass. He took one of the canapés, too, thinking that might help as well. He’d planned on having breakfast _after_ welcoming the household back. 

While he was chewing—and hoping nobody asked him anything—Captain Rogers said, “Tony, why don’t you tell Thomas how you captured the plesiosaur?”

Fortunately, Mr. Stark seemed happy to do so. From what Thomas could follow, the plan seemed to have involved attracting the beast’s attention by throwing fish at it, then dropping additional fish in a trail leading to the enclosure that had been prepared for it. When Mr. Stark paused for a response, Thomas remarked with great dignity, “Lucky it likes fish.”

“If it didn’t, we’d have tried something else,” Mr. Stark pointed out. “Though—sea monster. Fish seemed like the place to start.”

“Yes. Yes, sir. Of course.”

“So what did you and the guys do while we were gone?” Mr. Stark asked. “Other than the surprise, I mean. I am in no way trying to take advantage of your drunkenness to find out about the surprise.”

“Oh. We, ah, cleaned. Some things.” It seemed drastically unfair for Mr. Stark to pour vast quantities of rum down him and then expect him to give a coherent account of his duties, but he had to be able to do better than that. “That is, we gave some of the rooms a good turning-out. Behind the furniture and things. Uh, and I got in some practice with the appliances. And….” He must have done something else. Moving furniture and experimenting with the microwave was not a week’s worth of work. “Ordered a kettle and some proper tea for Dr. Banner.” That still didn’t sound like much. “That’s rather why we thought of the—the surprise.” He barely missed giving it away, too. “Because there wasn’t really much to do. With everyone away. Sir.”

“Must’ve been kind of boring,” Mr. Stark said sympathetically. “I hope you got out of the house some.”

“Uh. Yes. Just…’round the shops. You know.” 

“Things should be more exciting now that we’re back,” Mr. Stark said. 

“They usually are,” added Captain Rogers.

“But everything was okay? No problems? Other than the guys being, uh…well, you know how they are.”

“No. No problems, sir.”

“Good. Good,” Mr. Stark said briskly, propelling the words out like bullets. “I know they’re—not exactly ready for prime time. But they’re still better than anybody _else’s_ robots.” 

Thomas tried to remember if he’d said anything about the robots. He was almost sure he hadn’t. “They’re both very keen, sir. That’s something.”

“Good,” Mr. Stark said, in a completely different tone from his earlier bluster. Thomas thought it sounded almost tender, but that had to be the rum talking. “Some of the other butlers—other than Jarvis, I mean—didn’t like them much. Jarvis does. But I—you know. He likes them because I like them. So. Yeah.” 

Thomas dimly realized, through the fog of alcohol, that he had somehow managed to chalk up some points by liking the robots. Or seeming to. He wasn’t sure what to say about that—he didn’t _dislike_ them, in fact, but he was afraid that anything he managed to say would sound painfully insincere. 

There was a long silence, broken when Mr. Stark said, “JARVIS, how much longer until sunrise?”

“Forty-seven minutes, sir,” said Mr. Jarvis.

“Gosh,” said Mr. Stark.

Fortunately, the long wait for sunrise gave Thomas time to sober up some more. When the sun was finally fully over the horizon, Mr. Stark decided to go to bed after all, and Captain Rogers headed off for his own apartment. Thomas lingered on the terrace to have a cigarette—it seemed the only place he could have one without going the whole way down to the street level, and now that Mr. Stark was in residence, he couldn’t exactly go wandering out there whenever he liked. 

He managed to carry the tray inside and get everything into the dishwasher without breaking anything, which seemed a good omen, and after retreating to his own rooms for a cup of coffee, a hot shower, and another cup of coffee, this time accompanied by a full English breakfast, he felt ready to start the day.

It was a good thing, because he had plenty to do. Mr. Jarvis had put in the orders for most of the food, but he still had to telephone the bakery. Fortunately, Destinee summoned Ms. Valieri to the instrument as soon as Thomas asked for her, and she remembered his order and promised to have it baked freshly and sent over in the afternoon. He’d done the table-setting plan earlier, while the household were still away, but he still had to get everything out. There was the tablecloth to press and the napkins to fold. By the time he had that done, the others were starting to get up again for the day, so there were their coffees and breakfasts to make—they kept offering to do it themselves, but Thomas managed to dissuade them—and then, once they’d unpacked, laundry to start. 

Then the deliveries started coming. The flowers came first, which was good, because it gave Thomas time to arrange them. He was working on that—and, in fact, had them spread out across the dining table, there being no more suitable work surface available—when Ms. Romanoff and Mr. Barton came in. 

He straightened to attention—and it occurred to him, belatedly, that it was entirely possible that someone might want to use the table for eating between breakfast and dinner. “Sir, miss,” he said. “I can move this and bring you some luncheon. If you like.”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Barton, looking at Ms. Romanoff. “I think we’re just gonna stay out of the way.”

“C’mon,” Ms. Romanoff said, punching her companion on the arm. “I’ll buy you a hot dog.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Barton said again. “See you, Thomas. Uh, if you see Tony, could you ask him if I can borrow a tie? I have a funny feeling I’m gonna need one. Tonight.”

“Of course, sir,” Thomas said. 

As they left, Ms. Romanoff said, “Tie? I think I’m going to need a _dress_.”

#

Tony was in his workshop—shirtless, because after his Plesiosaur Sunrise and his nap, he’d forgotten about DUM-E’s new skill, and hadn’t thought to wear an extra one—cleaning salt residue out of the suit joints and tinkering with a few minor upgrades while he was at it. He’d nearly forgotten about The Surprise, until JARVIS said, “Sir, you may wish to begin dressing and making your way toward the common area shortly.”

He glanced at a time display; it wasn’t quite seven yet, and JARVIS had told him 7:30 for the surprise. “I think I can get my t-shirt back from DUM-E without much of a fight.” DUM-E had rolled back and forth waving it like a banner for a while after Tony gave it to him, but he’d eventually settled down and hung it carefully on a coat hanger, which he then hooked over the extruder pipe of one of the fabrication units. He seemed to have forgotten all about his prize since then. 

JARVIS made a throat-clearing sound. “Ms. Potts is wearing _this_ ,” he said, and displayed a picture of Pepper in something red and slinky. “If you require further persuasion, even Mr. Barton has asked to borrow a tie, and I believe he’s planning to wear something with _sleeves_.” 

“Is this surprise a _wedding_?” Tony asked, but he began shutting down the power-washing gun. Not Making An Effort when Pepper had made a considerable one had been a source of friction in both their employer-employee and girlfriend-boyfriend capacities. Unfortunately, he hadn’t fully absorbed this information in time to prevent her from breaking up with him, but it occurred to him that showing up for whatever this was in jeans and a t-shirt might end with both Pepper and Thomas mad at him. If taking ten minutes to put on a suit would keep both of them happy, that was a decent return on investment by anybody’s accounting. 

Leaving his t-shirt to DUM-E, he trotted down to his apartment and opened the closet doors. “What to wear, what to wear…hey, my gray suit’s back! When did that come?”

“While you were away, sir,” JARVIS said. 

“Did they get the blood out?” It was one of his favorite suits, and he had—to his mortification—probably ruined it attempting to demonstrate to Clint that he could, too, juggle steak knives. (Spoiler: it turned out he couldn’t.) 

“No, they didn’t,” JARVIS answered. “However, Mr. Barrow did.”

“He did?” Tony took it out and looked at it. “Awesome. We should give him a raise. Or a bonus. A bonus raise. I thought I’d have to throw this away.”

“If you like, sir. However, we did just provide him with a complete wardrobe, much of it from Billy Reid.”

“What’s Billy Reid?”

“The shop the suit you’re holding came from.”

“Well, I guess that’s fair, then.” Tossing the suit on the bed, Tony shimmied out of his jeans. “I didn’t know getting stains out of clothes was a butler thing.”

“He does have considerable training as a valet,” JARVI S reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. I never had one of those,” he mused. “Seems kind of like a funny job.”

“No,” JARVIS said. “You never found it necessary to pay anyone to take your clothes off.” A beat later, he continued, “However, I can think of many occasions when you would have benefitted from professional assistance putting them back on.”

“Ha-ha,” Tony said. Stepping into the suit trousers, he browsed shirts. “Um…purple, no, don’t want to be too matchy with Bruce and Clint…lime green?”

“No, sir.”

“Blue?”

“Which blue?”

“This one?” He brandished one in dark peacock blue. 

“Yes, that will do,” JARVIS said. “And you want the silver tie with the lozenges a shade lighter.”

“That’s what I want, huh?” Tony was pretty sure he didn’t _want_ to wear a tie at all.

“Yes, it is, sir.”

Tony put it on. 

#

Remarkably, everything was going smoothly. The food deliveries had all arrived on time—even the chickens, which he had worried would either come too early and go cold or too late and go…well, late. But they had come, Thomas had carved them, and they were now nestled comfortably in a chafing dish to keep warm. The soup was on the stove over low heat; the potatoes were in the oven, the fiendishly complicated procedure of preparing them having gone off without a hitch. The haricots verts were waiting in the microwave for the touch of a button to heat them at the last minute, the savories waiting on baking pans to go in the oven while the main course was being eaten. 

The table was set, centerpieces in place and not wilted; the only thing left to do was light the candles just before they came in. Wines were lined up in ranks on the countertop, breathing—there was absolutely nothing to decant them into, but Mr. Jarvis had assured him that taking them to the table in the bottles was acceptable. 

The sitting room was tidied up, with light, jazzy music playing—Mr. Jarvis had taken charge of that; apparently he had some way of playing records without a record player anywhere in evidence. Cocktail things were set out on the bar—Jarvis had also assured him that they wouldn’t mind fixing their own, though as a precaution, Thomas had tucked the over-proof rum away in an unobtrusive spot. 

Just when he was starting to wonder if, perhaps, the way things would go horribly wrong was that none of the household would show up, Mr. Stark arrived, accompanied by Mr. Barton, who was very obviously wearing one of Mr. Stark’s ties. Thomas would have known even if he hadn’t known—to his practiced eye, it was clear that the tie would have cost more than everything else Mr. Barton was wearing, combined. Mr. Barton was wearing a pair of the twill trousers that Thomas’s research told him were considered slightly more formal than jeans, with normal shirt—meaning, one with buttons, sleeves, a collar, and nothing written on it—and no jacket. 

Mr. Stark, on the other hand, looked _good_. He was wearing what Thomas would have called a day suit, but which he knew most 21st-century residents considered sufficiently formal for most occasions short of their own weddings. It was dove grey and very finely cut; with some startlement, Thomas realized it was the one he’d spent an hour sponging bloodstains out of a couple of days ago. For a fraction of a second, it felt oddly, thrillingly intimate, that he knew precisely how that suit would feel under his hands. 

He pushed the thought away ruthlessly as Mr. Stark said, “Wow. Everything looks great, Thomas.”

“Thank you, sir. I thought it might be fun to make a bit of an effort for your first night back.”

“Awesome,” said Mr. Stark, ambling towards the bar. “Let’s see, it’s been a while, but I think I remember the tune…cocktails while we wait for the others, right?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Jarvis thought you might want to do the honors yourself?”

“Sure thing. What’ll you have, Mr. Barton?” he asked with mock formality. “Martini? Manhattan? Sloe gin fizz?”

“You aren’t going to make me drink the ‘Drunken Archer’ this time?” Mr. Barton asked.

“No, this is clearly a classic cocktails kind of night.” Turning to Thomas, Mr. Stark explained, “We had a party once where I invented signature cocktails for everyone. Clint’s was the Drunken Archer.”

Not entirely sure how to respond to this overture, Thomas just inclined his head. 

Mr. Stark selected bottles of gin and vermouth, saying, “I’m having a Martini, while you make up your mind…Thomas, you want one?”

“Ah, no, sir. If there isn’t anything else, there are a few things in the kitchen that could use my attention.”

“Oh—sure, yeah. I’ll keep this under control.”

Thomas retreated to the kitchen, where he was not as thoroughly out of sight as he would have liked to have been. He stirred the soup—it was difficult to find a place on the electric stove dial where it neither scorched nor formed a skin on top—and wondered if he should have ordered some canapés. Or at least done more of the little woven biscuits. There were several other recipes shown on the packet in addition to the one he’d already tried—the one with cheddar and apples looked nice. 

Meanwhile, the others were arriving. He was bustling around putting the soup bowls on their little plates when Ms. Potts came over to the kitchen, accompanied by Agent Coulson, who Thomas had so far seen only in pictures. “Thomas, everything looks great!” She leaned in and air-kissed his cheek, which took him completely by surprise. 

He was slightly more prepared when Agent Coulson extended his hand. “Phil Coulson.”

“Sir,” Thomas said, shaking his hand. Back at Downton, guests would not have shaken hands with him, but that was a long time ago and in another country, wasn’t it? 

“You’ve been working hard,” Ms. Potts went on, looking at the table. “And I didn’t know you cooked…or did you get it catered?”

“Ah, no,” Thomas said, wondering if he should have done. “It’s just from the grocer’s. More a matter of reheating than proper cooking.”

“That’s how most people do it, these days,” she assured him. “ _And_ you got Tony to wear a suit!”

Mr. Jarvis spoke up. “I believe I have to take the credit for that, Ms. Potts.”

“Well, he looks great, too,” Ms. Potts said. Changing tacks, she asked, “Is there anything I can help with?”

The offer confused Thomas, until he remembered that, while Ms. Potts was now considered a personal friend of Mr. Stark, as well as being quite an important businesswoman, she had previously been, more or less, a member of domestic staff. Considered in that light, he thought it showed a nice bit of delicacy—she was, perhaps, a bit better than Branson had been at demonstrating that she hadn’t got too big for her boots. “Ah, no, but thank you.”

“If you do need a hand, just give me a wave—this looks like a lot for one person to manage.”

“I think I’ll be all right,” Thomas said. “I have a schedule. But thank you,” he repeated.

Fortunately, Ms. Potts and Agent Coulson drifted off to rejoin the others. They’d all arrived now, and after a few minutes of pottering around to give them time to finish their cocktails, Thomas started ladling the soup into the bowls and said, “Mr. Jarvis, will you announce? I think we’re about ready.” For a family party, Mr. Carson had usually just caught her ladyship’s eye and nodded toward the dining room door, rather than making a formal announcement that dinner was served, but as Mr. Jarvis didn’t have eyes in the usual sense, and in any case there was no Mrs. Stark, Thomas supposed an announcement would do. 

“I will,” said Mr. Jarvis, and then, from his speaker in the sitting room, “Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.”

#

Wow, they really were putting on the dog tonight, weren’t they? “Fancy dinner you have to dress up for” wasn’t exactly what Tony would have picked for a surprise, but now that it was happening, he thought it might be kind of fun. The whole thing—down to JARVIS announcing that dinner was served—reminded him of the fancy dinner parties his parents threw when he was a kid. Those had gotten much less interesting once he’d been considered old enough to attend them, but before that, he’d made a hobby of sneaking down from his bedroom to steal as many canapés and cocktail olives as he could before Mom or Mr. Jarvis caught him. 

Drawing on those memories, he offered Pepper his arm and said, “May I take you into dinner, Ms. Potts?”

“Certainly, Mr. Stark.”

Off to their left, Clint awkwardly stuck his arm out in Natasha’s direction and said, “Well?”

They went in—well, over—to dinner, with the others following in a clump. The table glittered with crystal—three wine glasses at each place, which seemed like a little much even to Tony. Thomas had alternated the plain white plates with the square black ones that the decorator picked out and they never used—the effect was actually kind of nice. With them was the usual flatware with the red plastic handles; if Thomas was going to do this sort of thing again, Tony would have to have the good silver sent over from the Long Island house. Still, the overall effect wasn’t bad—the flower arrangements were done in white with red accents, with nearly-black ferny stuff mixed in, so it all kind of looked like it was supposed to go together. 

In between the plates were little that Tony at first thought were place cards, but proved to actually be little menus. In French. 

“What’s _poulet rôti au marchand Joseph_?” Clint asked.

“That would be ‘roast chicken from Trader Joe’s,’” Tony informed him. “Very funny, JARVIS.”

“I thought you would enjoy it, sir,” he said. 

Once they were all seated, Thomas came around and poured white wine, then made another circuit handing out bowls of vivid green soup. He’d had it before—it was Spring Pea from the deli—but it really did taste better out of the fancy bowls. 

“You’re, um, not joining us?” Bruce said to Thomas.

Thomas said, “Ah, no, sir,” and Tony abruptly realized that the others were not quite as comfortable with dressing up and playing Fancy Old-Fashioned Dinner Party as he was. 

Thor looked outsized and out of place, even though he was wearing the normal Earth guy suit Tony had helped him pick out for a party with the colleagues of his Lady Jane. And the others looked intimidated by the formality of it all. Well, except for Natasha—she went to fancy parties all the time for work—but even she might be unsettled by not having a target. “Think of it as, like, experiencing Thomas’s culture,” he advised them. “Like that time we all drank mead and threw our glasses on the floor. We won’t be _doing_ that,” he added with a sharp glance at Thor. “It was an analogy.”

Steve, at least, looked slightly cheered by the suggestion. To Thomas, he said, “I guess they had fancy dinners like this a lot, where you worked?”

“Ah,” Thomas said. “This is, in fact, slightly less formal than a family dinner would have been.”

“Really?” asked Bruce. “What are we missing?”

“At least one footman, for one thing. And we’ve omitted the fish course,” Thomas explained.

“The the mushrooms with crab imperial don’t count as fish?” Steve asked, reading from the menu.

“Those are the savory, Captain,” Thomas told him, with just a hint of condescension. Tony was thrilled to hear it. “Mr. Jarvis thought four courses would be ample.”

“It is three more than we usually have,” Tony pointed out. “I think we can muddle through this once.”

“That was my thinking as well, sir,” said Thomas. He then retreated to the kitchen, leaving them to do their best at making grown-up conversation on their own.

Fortunately, Agent and Pepper hadn’t heard his Plesiosaur story yet. Phil had seen the interim status reports, but that wasn’t really the same thing. “So!” Tony said eagerly. “Earlier this week we went down to Florida to check on a sea monster….”

#

It was midway through the main course, the savories were in the oven, and everything seemed to be going well. He was a bit discomfited by the way they kept speaking to him—even the Dowager Countess, who was unusually chatty with servants, rarely spoke to him or any of the others more than once per meal—but everyone seemed pleased and impressed, which was, after all, what Thomas had been aiming for. 

Looking at what was left of the chicken in the chafing dish, he asked Mr. Jarvis, “Should I go round with it again?” He’d already been twice—the usual procedure for a family meal at Downton—but Mr. Jarvis had warned him about the prodigious appetites of some of the party. Captain Rogers and Prince Thor, he indicated, were each able to account for an entire chicken by themselves, and Dr. Banner might as well, if his green alter ego had recently been in evidence. There was still about three-quarters of a chicken left—not really enough to provide everyone with a full third helping, but he doubted very much that everyone would want one. 

“Yes, I think you had better,” Mr. Jarvis decided, so Thomas transferred most of the remaining chicken to the platter, reserving a drumstick and a bit of the white meat to eat later. 

Only Prince Thor took more chicken, but Dr. Banner asked, “Are there any of the green beans left?”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said. “I’ll bring them in a moment.” That was the trouble with doing all the serving on his own—he could only carry one thing at a time.

Echoing Thomas’s thoughts, Mr. Stark said, “See, that’s what we need the footman for. So you don’t have to wait for your green beans.”

“Precisely, sir,” Thomas said, with a genuine smile.

“I think I can survive the delay,” Dr. Banner remarked.

#

 

“ _More_ wine?” Steve asked as Thomas made another trip around the table, after clearing away the main dish plates, and pouring dark red wine into the smallest of the wine glasses at each place.

“This’ll be the dessert wine,” Tony informed him. “Thor, you’ll probably like this one—it’s sweet.”

“What happened to the mushrooms?” asked Clint.

“ _Clint_ ,” Steve whispered reproachfully. “Maybe they got burnt or something.”

Thomas said, “The savory comes _after_ the pudding, Mr. Barton.”

“It’s a British thing,” Tony told him. “Because…actually, I have no idea why. Just go with it.”

“I believe it’s so that the flavor of the port and cigars doesn’t combine inharmoniously with the sweetness of the pudding, sir,” explained Thomas. 

“Oh,” said Tony. “There you go,” he told Clint. To Thomas, he added, “The American style is to have something like that first, with the cocktails.”

“That’s done in England as well, sir. Or was,” Thomas added in an undertone. 

Thinking Thomas might be a bit upset by Clint’s implied criticism, Tony said bracingly, “It’s fun to try something new, isn’t it?”

“Definitely!” said Pepper.

When Thomas came around again with the desserts—cannoli and squares of dark chocolate cake with orange-ness oozing out from between the layers—Tony hesitated over which to choose. He was always tempted by cannoli, but they tended to disappoint. “Which do you recommend?” he asked Thomas.

“Either, sir. I tried both at the bakery. Everything there was quite good. In fact, I thought we might use them again.”

“In that case, I’d better try both,” Tony decided, helping himself from the tray that Thomas was holding. He tried the cake first, and said, “Oh, that is good.” Then he took a bite of the cannoli and started waving his arms around wildly. 

Thomas, on his way around the table with the tray, paused to look at him in alarm. 

Tony managed to swallow. “Where did you _get_ this?”

“Ah, a shop a few streets away.” Thomas named it.

“Yes!” Tony said. “That’s—with the, the red neon sign, and the, the shelves with all the liqueurs, and the glass case about a mile and a half long. Steve! Do you know it?” He remembered Mom saying she’d been there when _she_ was a kid, so if it hadn’t been new then, it would have existed in Steve’s day. 

“I don’t think so,” Steve said, looking up at Thomas with a confused expression.

“Tony,” Pepper said, laying her hand on his arm. “Back to the beginning of the thought process.”

Oh, right. He backed up until he got to a point that would make sense to the others, and said, “I’ve had this cannoli before. When I was a kid. When my mom would bring me into the city for school clothes . If I behaved myself, we went for pastries afterward. Where did you say the place was?”

Thomas gave the address.

“I thought it might still exist, but I didn’t quite remember the name, and I could have sworn it was on the East Side. ‘Cause Dad thought it was a little bit too ethnic. Wow.” He took another bite, wondering if he had, perhaps, imagined the similarity because he’d been thinking about his parents’ dinner parties. No, it was definitely the same cannoli. “This is amazing.” It didn’t happen often that Tony wanted something he couldn’t have—not something that could be _bought_ , anyway—but he’d been looking for this cannoli off and on for decades. 

“I’m glad you’re pleased, sir,” Thomas said, finally continuing on his path around the table. “They were quite interested in the idea of being a regular supplier for Stark Tower.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Let’s, uh, let’s make a weekly order. Couple dozen cannoli and some other stuff—maybe just work our way down the menu. JARVIS?”

“The establishment does not offer online ordering, sir,” JARVIS explained. “That’s why we haven’t tried them before.”

“I’ll telephone them, sir,” Thomas suggested. “Tomorrow.”

“ _Awesome_.”

#

After serving the savory—which, fortunately, Mr. Barton did not have any further complaints about—and waiting a few moments for them to eat it, Thomas returned to clear. Here was the part he wasn’t sure about. “Will the ladies be going through, sir, or shall I bring the port and cigars now?” He’d been unable to determine if the 21st century equality of the sexes extended to women drinking port and smoking cigars. 

“Going through _what_?” asked Ms. Romanoff. 

“Through to the living room, so we can smoke and tell dirty stories without you,” Mr. Stark explained. “Right, Thomas?”

“As you say, sir. However,” he added daringly, “I’ve found the ladies often use the time to discuss subjects unsuitable for mixed company as well.” Unmixed except for the footman bringing them their coffee, that is.

“I think we’ll stay,” said Ms. Potts, glancing over at Ms. Romanoff. 

“Sure,” she said. “I could use a cigar.”

So Thomas finished clearing the table and removed the cloth. Back in the kitchen, on his way to getting the port and cigars, he looked with dissatisfaction at the small mountain of dishes and glassware. There was no way it would all fit in the dishwasher. Not at once, anyway. 

Still, he couldn’t get started on it yet, so with a mental shrug, he returned to the dining…area…and started the port with Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark, quite properly, slid the bottle across the table to Ms. Potts, but the rest proceeded to pass it from hand to hand. Thomas did his best to conceal his horror, telling himself that if they ended up drinking sediment, they’d just have to like it, since they had no one to blame but themselves. 

Thomas had only been able to find one ashtray, so those of the party who wished to smoke—Mr. Stark, Ms. Romanoff, and Prince Thor—rearranged themselves at one end of the table. As he showed Prince Thor how to trim and light his, Mr. Stark said, “Have one, if you want, Thomas. You smoke, don’t you?”

Thomas hesitated. On the one hand, it was definitely not something Mr. Carson would have approved of. But it wasn’t really any different from having that drink with Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers this morning. And he did think he deserved a bit of a treat for bringing everything off so well, singlehandedly. “I do. If you’re sure you don’t mind, sir?”

“Wouldn’t have offered if I did,” said Mr. Stark easily.

“Well then. Why not?” He selected what he hoped was one of the less prestigious cigars on offer—it was the sort there were the most of, anyway—nipped off the end, and lit it with his own lighter. He essayed a slight lean against the wall as he smoked, and neither the voice of Mr. Jarvis from the ceiling or Mr. Carson from beyond the grave objected. 

“This was great,” Mr. Stark said. 

“It was kind of fun,” said Dr. Banner, sounding surprised about it. “Getting all dressed up and being fancy.”

“We should do it again,” Ms. Potts agreed. “Once Thomas has recovered.”

“And us,” said Ms. Romanoff. “I might not have to eat again for a week.”

“I’m having an idea,” Mr. Stark announced. “You had fun, right, Thomas? Putting all this together?”

“I rather did, sir,” Thomas admitted. 

“And Jarvis?”

“It was nice to stretch our wings a bit, sir,” Mr. Jarvis agreed.

“We should have a real party,” Mr. Stark said, with a firm nod. “With drinks, and food, and dancing, and people.”

“A fine idea!” said Prince Thor. 

Thomas, too, was cautiously optimistic. He’d already managed drinks and food; adding dancing and a few more people didn’t seem like a problem, unless Mr. Stark was hoping to do it _tomorrow_. 

“Tony,” Captain Rogers said. “I’m not sure if Thomas is quite _ready_ for one of your parties.”

“Aw, I think he’s doing okay,” said Mr. Stark. “Aren’t you, Thomas?”

He certainly hoped so. “Yes, sir. I’m sure I can manage.”

“And,” Mr. Stark went on, “here’s the genius part. We’ll make it a _Gatsby_ party. So Thomas will be right at home. I wonder when Leo DiCaprio’s free?”

Thomas had no idea who Mr. DiCaprio might be. And he hadn’t read _The Great Gatsby_ yet—the cover talked about it being a “classic of American Literature,” and he had decided to start with the detective novels—so he wasn’t entirely sure what a “Gatsby Party” might entail. 

Fortunately, Prince Thor asked, “What is a ‘Gatsby’?”

“It’s a book,” said Captain Rogers. “A character in a book, actually. He was known for--”

“Giving _really awesome parties_ ,” Mr. Stark interrupted. Thomas had a slight sense that Captain Rogers had been planning to finish that sentence a different way.

“Tony,” said Ms. Potts.

“We’ll need, let’s see, buckets of champagne…dance floor; we can put it out on the landing pads…I wonder if we should hire a band? Jarvis could DJ, but a band would give it more atmosphere--”

“ _Tony_ ,” Ms. Potts said more loudly.

“What?” asked Mr. Stark.

“Don’t you think a _Gatsby party_ might be a little bit much for Thomas and Jarvis on their own?”

“I’ll _help_ ,” Mr. Stark said. “And we’ll get caterers. Obviously.”

“Still,” said Ms. Potts. Thomas remembered her warning about Mr. Stark’s tendency to ask for things and then forget about them.

Captain Rogers added, “There’s also the fact that Fitzgerald wasn’t exactly _endorsing_ \--”

“Nobody _cares_ about that, Steve,” Mr. Stark moaned. “The whole point is to dress up like flappers and bootleggers and have a good time; it’s not a book club.”

Now Thomas was beginning to have an idea of what Mr. Stark had in mind. His own experience with flappers was limited to reading condemnatory editorials about them, and to the suggestion that his lordship’s niece Lady Rose was ambitious of becoming one. He also thought of the near-disastrous “indoor picnic” they’d had the night the oven went out, where one of the older lady guests had been, by the end of the evening, telling anyone who would listen that she felt like one of those “bright young things” in the papers. 

Mr. Stark and the others were all _adults_. Doubtless he had something like that in mind—a bit daring, but not actually improper. “I think we can manage something like that, with a bit of time to plan,” Thomas said. “Don’t you, Mr. Jarvis?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Jarvis, sounding only a bit dubious.

“Have you read the book yet, Thomas?” Captain Rogers asked.

“Ah, not yet,” Thomas said. “But I will straightaway.”

“Yeah,” said Captain Rogers. “You probably should.”

#

It was past midnight when the dinner party ended. Tony hopefully invited Pepper up to the penthouse for an after-party, but she smiled gently and said, “Sorry. Tony. I have a nine AM meeting tomorrow.”

He briefly entertained the notion of pointing out that she could save time by sleeping over, but reluctantly decided he had better not press. “OK—JARVIS, taxi?”

“Diverting one now, sir.”

Dredging up a vague memory of what one did at the end of grown-up parties, Tony walked Pepper down to the lobby and saw her into the taxi—whose driver had no idea he had been sent here by JARVIS rather than central dispatch. 

Going back up, he wavered between home, where he’d start getting more ideas for the Gatsby Party, or his workshop, where he could finish working on the suit. But, remembering _the cannoli_ , he made a last-minute break for the common floor. He thought there were a couple left, and those with a big cup of coffee would be just the thing to clear his head for the evening’s work. 

When he got there, everybody was gone except for Thomas, who had his jacket off and a white butcher’s apron on, and was standing at the sink rinsing wine glasses. He jumped a little when Tony said, “Hey.”

“Sir,” he said, turning and reaching for a dishtowel. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you come in. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Tony said. “I was just seeing if there were any cannoli left.”

“I think there’s one, sir,” Thomas said, going to the refrigerator and taking out a bakery box. 

“Great!” Tony went to the coffee maker, selected a “French Roast” pod, and fired it up. Thomas, after putting the cannoli on a plate, returned to the sink. “We have a dishwasher, you know,” Tony pointed out. But Thomas had to know that—it was running.

“Yes, sir. These wouldn’t fit, and if I left them, the red wine would stain.”

“Oh, right,” Tony said with a nod, picking up the cannoli plate and rooting around in the drawer for a fork. “There’s some kind of a trick for that. I remember Mr. Jarvis filling them up with…warm water and something.”

“Baking soda, sir,” said Thomas. “But since there are only a few, I thought I might as well just wash them now. If you don’t mind my carrying on with it.”

“No problem,” said Tony. “This is—” He waved his fork. “Nostalgic. I used to hang out in the kitchen with Jarvis, when I was a kid. Original Jarvis, I mean. He was our butler. My JARVIS is named after him.”

“Yes, sir. Captain Rogers mentioned that, I believe.”

The water swished hypnotically into the sink. When the coffee finished burbling into the cup, Tony picked it up and sipped, leaning against the counter. “You’d have liked him. He was a real old-school butler. He told me once—right before I left for MIT, I was fifteen—that when he was my age, he was a junior footman for Lady…somebody. In London. I forget the name.”

“That sounds like a good place for someone just starting out, sir,” Thomas said.

“I guess. Seemed pretty exotic to me at the time. Somebody my age having a job.” Then, just a couple of years later, after the accident, he’d been running Stark Industries. Nominally, at least. Obie had made most of the decisions, grand vizier to the boy puppet-king.

He pushed those thoughts away. “Anyway,” he said. “Gatsby party! JARVIS, can you queue up the party scenes from the movie?”

“Certainly, sir. Which adaptation? The first, from 1926, has been lost, and the 1949 version with Alan Ladd may take some effort to acquire, but I have the 1974, 2000, and 2013 ones in the library.”

Tony had been thinking of Leo’s new one, but he said, “Might as well look at them all. Can you whip up a highlight reel, to start with?”

“Of course.”

#

Thomas had supposed he’d have a look at the films later, with Mr. Jarvis, but as he finished with the glasses, he was drawn over to the sitting area by music unlike anything he’d ever heard before. If forced to describe it, Thomas would have said it sounded a bit like a waltz, played in rag-time on instruments including an electric eggbeater. 

The music was almost driven from his mind, though, when he saw what was on the screen. Women in spangled bathing dresses and strategically-placed feathers thrust their hips obscenely in time to the music.

Mr. Stark looked back over his shoulder at Thomas. “Ever seen anything like that before?”

Abruptly, both music and motion picture stopped, the film stilling on a shot of one of the dancer’s barely-clad posterior. “Ah, no, sir,” said Thomas. 

“Yeah, something tells me Baz wasn’t exactly going for historical accuracy here.”

Mr. Jarvis said, “Indeed, sir. Recorded interviews with Mr. Luhrmann indicate that he felt that incorporating elements of contemporary music and dance would be more effective in conveying the feeling of the Jazz Age to modern audiences than a more faithful interpretation.”

“He’s probably right. Girls in knee-length dresses doing the Charleston doesn’t exactly scream ‘wild party,’” observed Mr. Stark. “Back up, Jarvis—show him the one with Robert Redford.”

The music started up—recognizable jazz now—and the picture changed. It still focused on girls dancing, somewhat more modestly this time, though still nothing Thomas recognized. Periodically, the bandleader—or someone—shouted “Charleston! Charleston!” The hems of the women’s skirts swirled around their knees; the camera caught a glimpse of the top of a stocking. 

“Better?” asked Mr. Stark.

“I’m afraid I still don’t recognize the dance, sir,” Thomas said. 

“The Charleston dates from nineteen-twenty three,” add Mr. Jarvis. “And didn’t reach its peak of popularity until the second half of the decade.”

“What did they do, then?” Mr. Stark asked. “Foxtrot?”

“Yes, sir. And I believe the one-step was the latest thing with the young people, when I…left.”

“I don’t know that one,” said Mr. Stark. “Who was hot? Musically, I mean.”

Thomas tried to remember the most appalling things Lady Rose had listened to. “I believe Al Jolson was popular. And…Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra.”

“Make a note of it, Jarvis,” said Mr. Stark. 

Thomas stood and watched as the “highlight reel” played on. After the Charleston came scenes of people milling around on lawns and in drawing rooms, and a bevy of girls in short dresses crowded onto a sofa with drinks in their hands.

“This one’s really boring,” said Mr. Stark. “I can’t believe this would have been all that bacchanalian, even in 1925.”

“It does look fairly conventional, sir,” Thomas agreed. It was also the only one that resembled what he’d had in mind. It was difficult to get an idea, from the short clips, of how large the parties were, but he was beginning to get an idea of why Ms. Potts had suggested that what Mr. Stark had in mind might be a bit much for him to manage on his own.

“Make another note, Jarvis,” Mr. Stark said. “We’re not inviting anybody associated with this crapfest. Especially not—is that the guy from _Friends_? Skip the rest of this one; let’s see Baz and Leo’s again.”

The film and music switched back to the orgy with eggbeaters. A few moments later, fireworks were added to the cacophony. 

“I definitely want fireworks,” said Mr. Stark. “Jarvis? Can we have fireworks?”

“I can initiate a permit application once you have chosen a date, sir. However, the latest regulations require a minimum of one million dollars in insurance.”

Thomas would have thought that would put paid to the idea right there, but Mr. Stark just said, “Okay.” As the clips finished, he turned back around to look at Thomas again and said, “I’m thinking we’ll split the difference between Robert Redford and Leo—aim for splashy but a little bit more authentic. Sound good?”

“Of course, sir,” Thomas said, because what else _could_ he say. “Perhaps a bit…smaller, than the parties in the films seem to be?”

Mr. Stark’s shoulders slumped. “Smaller. Yeah, that’s…if that’s what you and Jarvis think is best.”

Clearly not what Mr. Stark had had in mind, though. Thomas hastened to explain, “I only thought that since the Tower doesn’t have a lawn, it might be wise to limit the number of guests.”

“No, but we have the landing pad. And they can spread out over this floor and the penthouse. We should be able to manage about two hundred before things start getting cramped.”

Two hundred. Dear God. “I see, sir.”

Mr. Stark added, “The caterers bring, you know, glassware and everything. And take it away and wash it when everything’s over. And Jarvis locks down all the rooms we don’t want them wandering through. It’ll be a piece of cake.” With that, he stood up and stretched. “This has been fun, but duty calls. See you.”

After that, Thomas didn’t see Mr. Stark again for three days, and every time he asked, Mr. Jarvis said that he was in the workshop. Thomas got started on the book—making notes about every mention of food, drink, music, or decorations—but the further he got, the more he hoped this would be one of those occasions that Ms. Potts had warned of, when Mr. Stark emerged from the workshop having entirely forgotten his previous enthusiasm. Gatsby did not seem at all to be the sort of person he’d want his employer to emulate. It seemed fairly plain that Gatsby was heading toward a bad end of some kind.

Keeping up with the others’ wants proved only slightly more work than not having them there at all. They dined as a group only once, on a _mélange_ of vegetables and rice prepared by Dr. Banner. Thomas learned that the other apartments were equipped with small kitchens like his, and that they were in the habit of eating separately when not drawn together by duty or some planned amusement—another piece to the puzzle of how they had managed to get along with only Mr. Jarvis before Thomas’s arrival. 

Thomas was on-duty in the sitting room—that is, was dusting things that weren’t really dusty yet, while waiting to see if anyone might be coming down to ask for anything, and idly contemplating the grocery order—when his telephone jangled. Mr. Jarvis had told him to keep it with him, as the household could use it to summon him if he wasn’t in sight when they wanted anything. So far, it hadn’t happened, but now it appeared that was about to change. 

Displayed on the screen was a text message—like a telegram, Mr. Jarvis had explained, but sent directly from one telephone to another—reading, “Thomas—Want to come down to my place? Ordering pizza. Steve.”

“Of course,” Thomas said automatically, even though he was nearly sure Captain Rogers couldn’t hear him. “Mr. Jarvis, do I reply to this? And—what does this mean?” 

Mr. Jarvis explained what a pizza was—displaying one on the telephone screen as illustration—and said that Captain Rogers had had him order it from an establishment in Brooklyn. “According to the restaurant’s internal systems, the delivery driver departed with it ten minutes ago, so it should arrive soon.”

Ah, he was meeting a delivery. Thomas had done that often enough now to be familiar with the procedure. “Let me know when it’s arrived in the lobby?” he asked Jarvis.

“Of course. And I’ll tell Captain Rogers to expect you with it.”

Pocketing the telephone, Thomas went back to dusting, glad, now, that there was an end to the chore in sight. After taking Captain Rogers his pizza, he’d sort out something more interesting to do—what, he wasn’t sure, but there had to be something.

The delivery driver was leaning against the lobby desk, talking to the security man, when Thomas went down to the lobby to meet him. “—eighty-seven?” Jerome was saying. “That’s Cap’s floor, but you’ll probably get--” Catching sight of Thomas, he raised his voice and said, “Mr. Barrow,” making it serve as greeting and introduction at once. 

“Mr. Alvarez,” Thomas said with a nod. He wasn’t sure if one was supposed to call a security man “Mr.,” strictly speaking, but there had been a distinct coolness in his manner after Thomas had informed him he wished to be called Mr. Barrow. Mr. Jarvis had suggested using the name’s title and surname the next time Thomas saw him, which had seemed to satisfy him.

“This here is Mr. Dougie from Donatello’s Pizza,” said Mr. Alvarez. “This is Tony’s gen-u-wine English butler.”

“Right,” said Dougie. “One large pepperoni and one large cheese for apartment 87?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, accepting two flat boxes and lifting the lids to check that he had received what was ordered. Not that he’d have actually known if he hadn’t, but he didn’t want to look careless. “Thank you.” The delivery boy still looked expectant, so Thomas added, “I believe you’ll find that the tip has been sent through the shop’s electronic payments system?” Mr. Jarvis had provided him with what he called “petty cash” for paying tips when he was unable to do it himself, but had also warned that many delivery personnel would try to collect twice if they could. 

Dougie made a show of checking his own portable telephone. “Oh, yeah, there it is. Must have not gone through yet when I left.”

Thomas sincerely doubted that, but kept his doubts to himself. “Thank you,” he repeated. “Good night, Mr. Alvarez.”

Captain Rogers was sitting on the sofa when Thomas arrived in his apartment—larger, but similarly furnished to Thomas’s own. “Hey,” he said, standing up and taking the boxes from Thomas’s hands. “Great, the game’s just starting.”

Apparently this was to be one of those informal, in-front-of-the-television meals Thomas had heard about. “Yes, sir. Will you be using a _plate_?” He didn’t see any.

“Yeah—they’re on the table. Will you grab the beer from the refrigerator while you’re over there?”

“Certainly.” The plates were on the kitchen table, as promised, but Thomas had to rummage in the cupboards a bit to find a beer glass. 

He realized that he had misunderstood the nature of Captain Rogers’s summons when he added, “There’s pop and other stuff in the fridge too, if you don’t want a beer. Help yourself.”

If Thomas had realized Captain Rogers was inviting him to dine, he’d have found a way to demur—whatever Rogers’s background, he was one of the household here, and Thomas was a member of staff. But now that he had already accepted—however inadvertently—backing out seemed the worse lapse. 

Besides, the only activity looming for the evening had been heating something in the microwave for dinner and finishing _Gatsby_. He took two glasses and got another beer from the refrigerator.

When he joined Captain Rogers on the sofa—a little gingerly, as he wasn’t entirely sure he _should_ be doing it—the captain opened the pizza boxes, saying, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I got plain and pepperoni. They’re both good.” He selected a wedge of the pie that was topped with red circles; Thomas decided to emulate him. “I’m glad you could come. We haven’t really had a chance to hang out since you’ve been here. But Jarvis said you weren’t real busy today.”

“Ah. No, it’s been quiet.” 

“It usually is when Tony and Bruce are doing science, and Clint and Natasha are on a SHIELD op. I asked Thor, too, but he has a phone date with Jane.” 

Thomas hadn’t even noticed that Mr. Barton and Ms. Romanoff were away. Their absence was, he supposed, just not as noticeable as Mr. Stark’s. Before he could come up with a reply, the action on the screen changed, with players jogging onto the bright green lawn. Captain Rogers shifted his posture, leaning slightly toward the television, and Thomas decided something must be happening that was important enough to make conversation superfluous.

The game proved to be baseball—something Thomas had heard of as what Americans played instead of cricket, but hadn’t seen until the Helicarrier mess hall televisions. Thomas paid a bit more attention to the pizza than he did to anything on screen—the procedure, as demonstrated by Captain Rogers, was apparently to pick up the slice in one hand, folding it slightly, and bite from the thin end of the wedge. It was trickier than it looked.

The game proceeded as far as an announcement of the players’ names before pausing for a presentation of advertisements, at which time Thomas put down his pizza, glad to stop struggling with it for a moment. “Which team do you support?” he asked, confident that he knew at least one appropriate conversational overture for such a situation.

Rogers sighed. “That’s kind of a tough question, actually,” he said, picking up his beer and drinking straight from the bottle. “The Dodgers were always my team—before, you know. But they moved to California while I was under the ice. So I kind of root for them, and kind of for the Mets, since they’re the hometown team now. But today they’re playing each other, so I don’t know what to do.”

“Sorry I asked,” Thomas said. “I didn’t realize it was a painful subject.”

Rogers laughed and shook his head. “What a problem to have, huh? I guess I can be glad whoever wins, might be the best way to look at it.”

Thomas decided he might as well favor the Mets, as he lived in New York now, but found it difficult to muster much interest. The announcer seemed under the impression that the bowler, whom the Americans called a pitcher, was varying his delivery of the ball—“fastballs” and “curve balls” were mentioned, among others—but they all looked pretty much the same to Thomas. He was even more confused by the behavior of the batsmen—they frequently seemed to stand and watch the ball go by; the announcer at times called this a “strike”—even though nothing had been struck—and other times a “ball.” A few of these in a row were invariably followed by a series of advertisements and then the introduction of a new batsman, and sometimes a change in the team at bat. 

Still, the frequent commercial breaks provided ample opportunity for conversation. Captain Rogers, it turned out, had played an informal version of the game in his youth, with a broom handle substituting for the bat, as no one could afford a proper bat. “Sometimes even the broomstick was hard to get—my friend Bucky, one time, after some bigger boys took ours, he cut the head off his ma’s broom so we could play. Boy was she mad. He didn’t get a licking—his dad was gone by then—but she told him he was in charge of sweeping the apartment until he saved up the money for a new broom. So I’d go over and there he’d be, bent over, sweeping the floor with just the head of the broom.” Chuckling, Rogers stood, scooping up the two empty beer bottles from the table. “You want another one of these?”

“All right,” Thomas said, somewhat relaxed now. This would make his third, but they had been watching the game for a while. He selected another slice of pizza, deciding to try the “plain” this time. 

At the next advertising break, Captain Rogers asked, “What about you? Did you play any sports?”

“Oh, a bit of cricket. Fairly good at that, actually. For, you know, just village cricket. We used to—at Downton, there was a match every year, the house versus the village. The village usually won—they had more men to choose from; sometimes it was hard for the house to find enough men for a side. But his lordship was keen on it.” Thomas very nearly mentioned how that keenness had saved his job once, but stopped himself just in time. “And football, of course, in the war—proper football, not that Rugby thing they play here. They used to make you play it at the rest camps—so you didn’t get too much rest at the canteens, I suppose. Did they have those when you were in France? Little shacks where an old French woman would sell you--”

“Vinegary wine,” Captain Rogers said. “Yes! And--”

“Stew you’d better not ask too many questions about.”

“Sometimes there were two,” Captain Rogers added, “and you had to choose between the one who was a good cook, and the one who had the pretty granddaughter.”

Thomas had never been personally troubled by that particular dilemma, but he was familiar with it in the abstract. “Yes—you never got both in the same place. We thought all the good cooks with attractive granddaughters must have been hired to work at the officers’ billets.”

“They must’ve been at HQ,” said Captain Rogers. “I never saw them, either.”

“Which did you go for?” Thomas felt bold enough to ask. “Good food or pretty girls?” He hadn’t gotten the impression that Captain Rogers was one of his sort—but he’d been mistaken about that before, hadn’t he?

“Whichever my friends wanted, usually,” Rogers said, but added, “I had a girl. Girl in uniform. Peggy—she was a WAC. We—had a date the night I went down.”

“Sorry,” Thomas said, now wishing he hadn’t brought that up, either. 

Rogers shrugged. “She had a full life. Husband, kids. Happy, as far as I can tell. And that’s…what I would have wanted for her, so….” He shook his head. “Have you looked up any of the people from your…first life?”

“No,” said Thomas. He hadn’t realized he could. “Not sure how I’d do that.” Or if he wanted to. They were all dead, of course. Did he want to know how long they’d lived? If Jimmy—for instance—had married, or been chewed up in Captain Rogers’s war?

“Jarvis could look them up for you,” Rogers said. “If you ask him to. A lot of records are on the computer now—I mean, they put the new ones there to begin with, but they’ve put the old ones in, for people researching their ancestors. It’s…kind of rough, since everybody…dies at the end, but you do find out about the good things.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Thomas said. 

“I’ll, you know—be there when you do it. If you want,” Captain Rogers said, and then drew Thomas’s attention to something interesting that was supposedly happening in the baseball game.

Thomas left Captain Rogers’s apartment an hour or so later, feeling just slightly tipsy, and rather glad he’d gone. He’d genuinely enjoyed it more than his last evening out—even discounting the way that evening had ended, with a not-really-cyclone and a man flying through the air on fire. He’d even, he realized with some amusement, had a pint and pie, in a way. 

He decided to make a detour up to the penthouse, and pop out on the terrace for a smoke—he’d been smoking quite a bit less than he used to, both because of the inconvenience of going outside and because he didn’t fancy cancer, but he wanted one now. 

Sitting at the little wrought-iron table, he lit up and looked out over the skyline—bigger and brighter than anything he’d seen before he’d come here. Idly, he wondered what it had looked like in 1921, and what London looked like now. And if they showed cricket on television, back in Blighty. He could ask Mr. Jarvis—he had ways of finding out just about anything—but decided they probably did. Test matches, at least. If they didn’t, it was likely because they didn’t play anymore, and if that was the case, he didn’t want to know.

Occupied by his thoughts and looking out over the city, he didn’t see the lights come on in the penthouse behind him, or hear the doors slide open. “Thought it might be you out here,” said Mr. Stark.

Reflexes finely honed by over a decade in service allowed him to spring to his feet and stub out his cigarette in the same motion. “Sir. I didn’t realize you’d--” There must be some way to end that sentence other than _catch me_ , wasn’t there? “Be up.”

“Not for much longer,” said Mr. Stark, dropping into the chair across from where Thomas had been sitting. “You’re fine,” he added, waving the glass in his hand at the place where Thomas had been sitting. “Sit down, if you want.”

The ice cubes in Mr. Stark’s drink clinked, and it abruptly occurred to Thomas—for no particular reason he could fathom—that there must be somewhere in this bright new world for a man like him to find some like-minded company. He’d no idea how he could go about finding such a place, since asking Mr. Jarvis or even Mr. Alvarez was out of the question, but he thought perhaps he ought to give some attention to the project, sooner rather than later.

He sat, dry-mouthed, and Mr. Stark went on talking. “I guess Jarvis told you about the—binge engineering?” Thomas’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Mr. Stark clarified, “Disappearing for a couple of days, I mean.”

“Oh—yes, sir. And Ms. Potts mentioned it as well.”

“I bet she did.” He put his head back and groaned. “God, I’m tired. Productive, though. Think I’ve got a new patent.”

“Have you, sir?” Thomas said, because some response seemed to be wanted.

“Yeah—sealant spray, for reducing--” He paused to yawn hugely. “—salt water corrosion in the suit joints, during ocean flights. Well, that’s what I made it for. But I think the Jet-Ski companies will be interested.” 

“It—sounds very useful, sir.”

“Do you have any idea what a Jet-Ski is?” 

“No,” Thomas admitted. “Not unless it’s like aquaplaning with an aeroplane in place of the motorboat. Which sounds a bit unsafe.”

“Hah. No, it’s like…uh…little motorboat, but you sit on it like a motorcycle. Anyway. Salt water corrosion is an issue. Not my sexiest invention ever, but it’s always a bonus when something I do for the suit puts money in the bank.” He didn’t sound particularly happy about it—though if he was as rich as the magazines said, money in the bank might not be very interesting too him. “Oh!” Suddenly, he sat up straight. “Jarvis, send some samples to the prosthetics division.” To Thomas, he said, “Somewhere, there is a one-legged surfer who is about to have a very good day.”

That, he sounded genuinely pleased about. 

#

“—buyout of Jednota Tech has been accomplished under projected costs, and Mr. Notales has accepted a position in R&D, as you had hoped,” JARVIS said as Tony, sitting at the kitchen table in his boxers, methodically worked his way through half a carton of hard-boiled eggs. After three solid days in the workshop, living on smoothies and cereal, he needed the protein, almost as much as he needed updates on what had been going on with his company while he was otherwise occupied. “The Center for Prehistoric Sea Creatures continues to struggle with approximating the plesiosaur’s natural diet; I took the liberty of acquiring a small aquiculture plant in Japan to initiate production of the required species, once it becomes clear what they are. Preliminary response of the Prosthetics division to the new sealant is enthusiastic; they hope to begin testing next week.”

“Awesome,” said Tony, around a mouthful of hard-boiled egg. 

“My efforts to locate a digital copy of the 1949 _Gatsby_ have met with no success,” JARVIS added, sounding faintly embarrassed about it. “However, the remastered film reels can be obtained from Paramount’s library.”

“Huh,” said Tony, peeling another egg. “Dunno, do you think we have to?”

“I judge it unlikely that viewing the film is essential to your continued survival, sir.”

“You know what I mean.” 

“I believe you had selected Mr. Luhrmann’s film as a primary influence, sir?” 

“Yeah. But more old-timey.”

“Then I am dubious that the 1949 film will be of much help,” JARVIS said. “The 1926 version would be, if there were any prints of it still in existence.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for if we ever build a time machine,” Tony said. 

“If we were in possession of such a device, sir,” JARVIS pointed out, “surely it would be incumbent upon us to use it to send Mr. Barrow home, rather than to use it to enhance the planning of a theme party.”

For the first time in his life, Tony was glad he _didn’t_ have a time machine. “You think he’d actually want to?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

It seemed self-evidently obvious to Tony that living in _The Future!_ was superior to living in the past. But he wondered if he’d feel that way if he was stuck in his own future. It would be cool, definitely, but he’d miss Pepper and Rhodey and the team and everybody. 

Whether he’d miss them enough to overshadow how cool it was, he wasn’t sure. It might depend on whether the people in the future were a bunch of assholes or something.

He hoped Thomas didn’t think they were a bunch of assholes. Tony usually didn’t worry much about whether people thought he was an asshole or not, but he thought Thomas might be an exception. 

“Anyway,” he said. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

“You’ve already missed team training,” JARVIS reported.

“Really? I just got up.”

“Yes, and it’s nearly 3 PM. Likewise, you’ve also missed the conference call with the Stark Industries Divisional Vice-Presidents.”

“Like I was going to do that anyway,” Tony scoffed.

“I know, but I did promise Ms. Potts I would remind you about it. Moving on to things you have not missed, the cannoli delivery is scheduled for this afternoon, and Ms. Romanoff and Mr. Barton have proposed a movie night.”

Tony zeroed in on the most important part of that sentence. “When’s the cannoli?” 

“Mr. Barrow asked for it to be delivered by teatime.” 

“Uh…four, right?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Awesome.”

After an hour or so of puttering around—during which time he remembered to put on some clothes—Tony went down to the common floor, where he was greeted by the smell of fresh coffee and the sight of Thomas, standing over the coffee table, arranging cannoli and little fruit tarts on a tiered cake stand that Tony had no recollection of owning. “Hey, Thomas.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“It’s always a good afternoon when it’s cannoli day!” Tony declared, taking one from the stand and eating half of it in one bite. 

Thomas frowned at him slightly and replaced it with another from the box, before handing Tony a plate. “Would you like coffee? Or tea?”

“Oh, yeah. Coffee. Please.” 

Thomas poured some from a silver pot—no idea where that came from, either—into a cup with a saucer. “We could order the cannoli more than once a week, if you liked, sir.”

Tony shook his head regretfully. “Only if I want to turn into a whale.” 

Bruce or even JARVIS would probably have suggested that Tony instead try exercising some self-control where the cannoli were concerned, but Thomas just said, “I see.” 

“Is anybody else coming to Cannoli Day?” Tony wondered. If it was just him and Thomas, whale-dom might be imminent anyway. 

“I’m not sure, sir.” 

Shrugging, Tony took a second cannoli. “D’you have a progress report on the party planning? I haven’t really had a chance to think about it since before.” Given how quickly Grown Up Dinner Party Night had come together, he thought that if he didn’t keep on top of things, he’d find that everything had been done without him.

“Ah,” said Thomas. “I’ve written down a few ideas. But I wasn’t sure if I should get too far into things until you were…not otherwise occupied.”

Tony snapped his fingers. “Pepper warned you about me forgetting things while I’m doing science, didn’t she. I bet she told you about the horse.”

“She did mention that you occasionally change your mind, sir,” Thomas said stiffly.

“Yeah. Well. When you have as many great ideas as I do, sometimes some of them drop off the priority list. But it’s fine; I said I was gonna help. What’ve you got so far?”

“There isn’t a great deal of detail, in the book, about the parties, but I made note of what there was. We’ll definitely need a great deal of Champagne. It’s the drink most often mentioned specifically. Apparently Gatsby liked to serve it in glasses the size of finger-bowls—the comparison is made more than once.”

“Oh, good detail,” Tony said. “But everybody has big champagne glasses now. We need something more, uh…more! What about, uh—JARVIS! Those big things they put the elaborate cocktails in at resorts—the ones where they refuse to sell you more than two. What are those?”

“Fish bowls, sir?” asked JARVIS. 

“Yeah, those! Look around for a supplier—I bet the caterers won’t have them.”

“Perhaps you’d like to simply _spray_ it over your guests with a fire hose,” suggested JARVIS. 

“He thinks he’s funny,” Tony confided to Thomas. “No, JARVIS, I think the fish bowls will be sufficient.”

“You want to serve Champagne in fish bowls. Sir.” Thomas sounded, if anything, even more disapproving than JARVIS had.

“Not _actual_ fish bowls,” Tony clarified. “You get them from—I don’t know. A bar store. JARVIS? Can you show us a picture?” He took out his phone, and the screen displayed a glass fishbowl with a fluted edge, full of something bright blue and doubtless fiendishly alcoholic. He turned the screen toward Thomas. “Like that.”

“Ah,” said Thomas. “How…charming. I’m not sure they’re entirely practical for Champagne, though. Such a…large amount, in an un-stemmed glass, would get warm before it was finished.” 

“I bet I could drink a fishbowl of Champers before it got warm,” Tony said. “But you have a point. Maybe just big Champagne glasses, then. Oh! But we could make some kind of punch to go in the fishbowls. And float yellow Rolls-Royces in them. Toy ones,” he added, before Thomas could get the wrong idea.

“What an unusual idea, sir,” Thomas said. “As for other drinks ideas, the book mentions bar with a real brass rail, with gin, liqueurs and cordials, as well as crate of oranges and lemons for mixing cocktails. So, gin rickeys, gin fizzes, gin sours, that sort of thing. Mr. Jarvis tells me that liqueurs and cordials are not often drunk today, but perhaps offer a few of those for atmosphere.”

“Sure,” Tony said, nodding. “If we have the cater-waiters carry them around on trays, people will drink them. And we’ll get a bartender who knows all the classics.” Lashings of Champagne, gin cocktails, something in finger bowls. That was a start on the drinks, at least. “What about food? We can’t get people all liquored up and not feed them; they’ll sue when they die on the way home.”

“Gatsby’s menus appear to have been fairly conventional—just a great deal of everything. Ham and turkey, shouldn’t be too difficult. Unspecified hors-d’oeuvre, pastry pigs, and ‘salads of Harlequin design.’”

Bo-ring. “What on earth are pastry pigs?” Tony wondered. 

“I believe you call them ‘pigs in blankets’ on this side of the pond, sir.”

“Boring,” Tony said. “It’s not a PTA Christmas party. But there must be some way to make pigs in a blanket interesting…make the hot dogs out of alligator sausage or something.”

“That would certainly be unusual,” Thomas allowed.

“That’s just an example,” Tony hastened to add. “But you know what, we don’t really have to figure it out—we can just tell the caterers we want some kind of interesting take on pigs in a blanket, and then it’s their problem.”

“I see. And…the same for the salads, I suppose. Alligator in aspic?”

“Ugh. Nobody eats anything in aspic anymore. I’m not sure I could even get people to eat it ironically.” Tony considered the possibilities. “But it would’ve been pretty standard in the 20’s, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Maybe the caterers will be able to suggest something…oh, wait, I know!”

“Sir?”

“Savory Jell-o shots.” Thomas failed to look impressed, and Tony realized some explanation might be required. “Jell-o shots are like, uh—well, Jell-o is gelatin. And to make shots, you mix it up with vodka instead of water. It’s usually sweet—fruit flavors, you know. But savory ice cream’s really hot right now—garlic ice cream, tomato ice cream, stuff like that. So—savory Jell-o shots. Like, uh, Jell-o Bloody Mary. Could work. And nobody else is doing it.” He nodded with satisfaction. 

#

From the moment he’d heard how large a party Mr. Stark had in mind, Thomas had held out some hope that this would prove to be one of the occasions when Mr. Stark changed his mind. Those hopes had only increased once he read—and then _finished_ —the book. Putting a great deal of effort into a party larger than anything even Mr. _Carson_ had ever attempted was one thing; doing all that work to erect a monument to poor taste seemed a bitter pill to swallow.

And beyond that was the fact that, in the novel, all of Gatsby’s ridiculous excesses had gotten him killed. Thomas did not consider himself a superstitious person, but intentionally re-creating them seemed like tempting fate. 

Still, if it was what Mr. Stark wanted, it was up to Thomas to see that he got it. Once a date was fixed upon—Mr. Stark chose early October, on the rationale that if it were held in late October, the guests would probably come dressed as _dead_ flappers and bootleggers—preparations began in earnest. Fortunately, Thomas had assisted with the planning of enough events to have a firm grip on the practicalities that needed to be attended to—and Mr. Jarvis’s records of previous parties helped him see how those things translated into the modern world. Mr. Stark himself was more than able to supply enough ridiculous details to keep Thomas on his toes. 

For instance, Thomas would have thought that the house’s normal furnishings, with some extra floral arrangements, would suffice for decoration, but Mr. Stark informed him that they also needed strands of tiny electric lights, and, “Ice sculptures! You can’t have a party without ice sculptures.”

In consultation with Mr. Jarvis, Thomas ascertained that these were exactly what they sounded like, and obtained photographic portfolios from several Manhattan-area suppliers of such things. Common themes seemed to include hearts and swans, which Thomas supposed wasn’t too bad, but when he showed the photographs to Mr. Stark in hopes of getting him to choose something, he learned that his employer had something different in mind.

“This guy looks good,” he said, pointing at one of the photographs. “But we’ve gotta make sure he can do fully-custom work. Some of them just use molds. I want—I couldn’t decide between Iron Man, or the Tower—I mean, they’re both awesome, right? So then I thought, why not both?”

“You want an ice sculpture of…yourself. Sir. And one of your house.”

“Exactly. The one of the Tower can be lit from below in arc-reactor blue, and the one of me—well, red, obviously. We can put one at each end of the buffet table.”

“It…won’t be symmetrical,” was only the first of Thomas’s objections. 

“Hm,” said Mr. Stark. “Good point.”

“And—speaking of that, the catering staff came in to take measurements and start thinking about layout. We’ve had some trouble sorting out where the buffet table will fit.” Mr. Stark had said he wanted it to be “a mile long,” and even allowing for hyperbole, there wasn’t an ideal space anywhere in either the common floor or the penthouse. 

“There’s gotta be somewhere,” Mr. Stark objected. “Jarvis, give me an interactive floor plan, both levels.”

Floor plans of the common floor and penthouse appeared on the dining table—which, it turned out, was not made of ordinary glass at all, but was essentially a giant telephone screen. By touching the table’s surface, Mr. Stark flicked various “furnishings” out of the “rooms” they inhabited, pausing only when Mr. Jarvis said, “That is a _load bearing_ wall, sir.” 

“Oops. Okay, what about along the east wall of the living room down here?”

“It would just work if we placed it flush with the wall, sir, but then both guests and the catering staff would have difficulty reaching some of the platters. On the other hand, if we set it a few feet out from the wall, it’ll block people coming off the lift.”

“Yeah, that’s no good. The dining room’s the logical place for it, but it’s not big enough. Maybe we should do the whole thing down in the lobby.”

The rest of that day’s party discussion was devoted to dissuading Mr. Stark from that idea. Thomas eventually come right out and say that there were no lavatories down there, and with the amount of champagne they were planning to serve, requiring guests to travel to another floor to find one would be likely to end badly.

Mr. Stark’s next idea—delivered via telephone text message—was that perhaps the party should be held at his Long Island home. For a brief time, it seemed as though Thomas’s practicality and Mr. Stark’s “commitment to the theme” were in complete accord: it would be much easier to stage something of this magnitude at a house that was not in active use as a residence, and the original Gatsby’s parties had been held in a mansion on Long Island. Furthermore, photographs and floor plans supplied by Mr. Jarvis showed that the Long Island house was what Thomas thought of as a normal great house, with public rooms on the first storey, the kitchens and other domestic offices below, and the family’s bedrooms and other private spaces above. Inventories also demonstrated that it was stocked with silver and glassware sufficient to entertain on a scale like what Mr. Stark had in mind.

Everything in Thomas’s garden was rosy for a day or two, and the caterers were also enthusiastic, until Ms. Potts came and insisted on taking him out to lunch to “see how he was settling in.”

Thomas mentioned the party—it would have been difficult not to, since it seemed to occupy half his waking thoughts. 

Ms. Potts winced visibly. “He’s really throwing you in the deep end, isn’t he? And I bet it gets more and more elaborate every time you talk to him.”

“It rather does,” Thomas admitted. “So far the one thing he hasn’t been able to increase is the guest count—at least not by much—but I’m afraid that now that we’re moving it to Long Island, he’ll realize we have room for more.”

“Long Island,” Ms. Potts repeated. “You mean—the Long Island house?”

“Yes—it’s actually fairly near where the book is set, so that appeals to him, and it seems rather practical as well, since we’ll be able to set up in advance without interfering with the normal operations of the household.”

“Yeah,” said Ms. Potts. “It absolutely makes sense. There’s just one problem: you can’t do it.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Tony hates the Long Island house. He never goes there. I threw three parties for him there, before I figured it out—he skipped every one of them. Either he hides in his workshop and says he’s too busy being a genius to go to his own party, or he invents some Stark Industries crisis he has to attend to, or—one time he just flew to Vegas and shot craps all night with his phone turned off. You can imagine how embarrassing that was, when the gossip rags got hold of it.”

“It was his idea to have it there,” Thomas pointed out.

“I’m sure it was. He’ll feel differently when it gets closer to the time. It’s--” She sighed. “He grew up there, and his childhood—wasn’t very happy. He thinks it shouldn’t bother him, but it does. Tell him—remind him that Jarvis isn’t fully installed there. He’s only in a couple of the rooms, so he won’t be able to keep an eye on things and help you ride herd on the catering staff. It’s possible he’ll say he can just finish installing Jarvis there—but to do that, he’d have to go there, so at that point he’ll come up with his own excuse not to.”

Thomas made appropriate noises of gratitude to Ms. Potts for keeping him from making a serious blunder, but inwardly, he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t think of any reason why she would want to handicap him, not now that she was running Mr. Stark’s company, but the strategy she suggested would require him to as much as admit he didn’t think he could handle the party without Mr. Jarvis’s supervision. 

It was probably _true_ , but that didn’t mean he wanted to go around saying it. 

#

Things were really coming together, party-wise. With Thomas handling all the boring stuff—everything from scheduling meetings with the caterers to renting a tent and dance floor for the landing pad to talking with Jerome about security—Tony was free to let his imagination run wild. 

Occasionally, Thomas even came up with an idea or two of his own. For instance, it turned out that there was no inventory of vintage yellow Rolls-Royce matchbox cars available for love nor money. “I could divert a factory to making them for a couple of days, but that seems like a little much, even for me,” he told Thomas.

“To be honest, sir, I was never sure about that detail. There is a yellow Rolls-Royce in the novel, but it never comes in contact with the swimming pool. If you really want to have…novelty items floating in fishbowls of blue punch, figurines of swimmers would make more sense. Though adding something red to represent Gatsby’s blood after he’s shot at the climax of the novel might be taking things too far.”

“Yeah—now, if we were doing the Halloween Gatsby party, maybe. But I think you’re on to something—JARVIS, see if you can find little plastic people in old-timey bathing suits.”

“As it turns out, sir,” said JARVIS, “I can.”

“It’s too bad it’s going to be October,” Tony added. “If we were having it in summer, we could get a synchronized swimming team to do a show. In old-timey bathing suits. Sort of an Esther Williams vibe.”

“That would be out of period, sir,” JARVIS said. “Ms. Williams’s film career spanned the 1940’s to 1950’s. She wasn’t born until 1921. Beyond that, it’s unlikely that the swimming pool at the Long Island house is still operational.”

“Speaking of the Long Island house,” Thomas said. 

“Yeah?”

“It occurs to me that the swimming pool may not be the only thing that has suffered the ravages of time. Mr. Jarvis tells me the caretaker couple is quite elderly, and no one else has been out there for some years. It might be wise to go out and have a look round, before we get too much farther.”

He had a point. Tony hadn’t seen the house since…gosh, he wasn’t sure. They’d had some benefit or other out there about five years ago, but he thought he might have been too busy to go to it. And the SI 60th anniversary before that, which…come to think of it, he might have missed that one, too. Pep would have checked everything out at the time, but five years was a long time, in old, unoccupied house-years. “You’re right, we should. If the roof had caved in or something, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace would have said, but there might be things we have to get fixed up first, that they didn’t notice. JARVIS, what’s my schedule like this week? Can you find a gap big enough for a Long Island field trip?”

“You’re free Wednesday afternoon, sir, after the Champagne tasting.”

“Excellent! Oh, but if we’re tasting Champagne first, I can’t drive. Check with Pep if we can steal Happy back that day.”

After a brief pause, JARVIS said, “Ms. Potts wishes me to remind you that Mr. Hogan is, in fact, your driver, and you should feel free to call upon his services whenever necessary.”

“Right, but—she doesn’t need to be driven anywhere special that day?”

Another pause. “She says no, sir.”

“Okay. Have him meet us here at—when’s the thing at the wine place?”

“Half-past eleven, sir,” Thomas said.

“At eleven.” 

#

Thomas was beginning to have doubts about his choice of methods for sorting out the Long Island Dilemma. The Champagne tasting had gone well. At least, the wine-shop owner had been satisfyingly obsequious to begin with, and became even more so when Mr. Stark decided to increase the order from fourteen cases to eighteen, on the grounds that it would be better to have Champagne left over than to run out. 

But Mr. Stark hadn’t seemed to enjoy it much—far less than he’d enjoyed sampling artisanal gins the week before. Throughout the tasting, he had a tendency to stare off into space, drumming his fingers nervously on the casing of the light in his chest. His commentary on the wines was noticeably lacking in both enthusiasm and detail, consisting mostly of things like, “That’s…nice. Maybe not as nice as the other one? Let me try the first one again.”

While Thomas had previously found his employer’s tendency to babble a bit trying, he now found that he missed it a little. And he wasn’t nearly as pleased as he would have thought he’d be that Mr. Stark made it through the tasting without proposing any new, creative ideas that would increase either Thomas’s workload or the party’s level of tackiness, both of which he privately thought were in no need of further augmentation. 

“I like one and four,” Mr. Stark said, once he had tried each of the six options at least twice. “What do you think?”

“Four,” Thomas said decisively. It cost about a third less than option one, and was on the list of recommendations that Mr. Jarvis had compiled, based on reviews published in wine magazines. Since Mr. Jarvis lacked a sense of taste himself, he had assured Thomas that he should use his own judgment if the recommendations proved unsatisfactory, but Thomas agreed that number four was quite good. 

“Okay. Good. Eighteen cases of number four,” Mr. Stark told the shop owner. 

“Very good, sir. Excellent choice. Will we be delivering to Stark Tower?”

“Uh…we’re still firming up the location. Let’s say the Tower, yeah. We’ll call you if it changes.” Mr. Stark handed over his credit card, and that was one item ticked off Thomas’s list. 

Thomas used his portable telephone to notify Hogan that they were leaving, and the car met them outside the shop. It had been a bit of a surprise to learn that Mr. Stark did, in fact, have one other human member of staff; it turned out that the driver, who lived out, had been seconded to Ms. Potts for Stark Industries use, but was quite pleased to be driving Mr. Stark again.

On the pavement, Thomas opened the door for Mr. Stark, then got in behind him—he’d tried, when they left the Tower, to ride up front with the driver as he thought proper, but Mr. Stark thought otherwise. As the car pulled away from the curb, Hogan looked in the rear-view mirror and said, “We still going out to Long Island, boss?”

“Um…yeah. Let’s, um, take the scenic route, though. I don’t want to go through the tunnel.”

“Sure thing.”

As they rode, Mr. Stark continued the finger-tapping tic, and wriggled in his seat like a small child in need of a toilet. At first, Thomas wondered if that was, in fact, the problem—Mr. Stark had drunk rather more Champagne than was customary for a tasting. But when he asked, feeling rather like a nanny, if Mr. Stark needed to stop at the Tower for any reason, he shook his head. “No. I just—I haven’t been out to the old house for a while. I mean—you know that; that’s why we’re going.”

“Yes, sir.” 

“I never really spent that much time there. I mean, I was always at school. But.” He stared out the window and tapped his chest. “You know, the only reason I didn’t sell it, when I moved to California, was that I’d have had to clear it out. Figure out what I wanted to keep. I don’t….”

At that point, Thomas was entirely sure that Ms. Potts had been telling the truth about Mr. Stark’s aversion to the Long Island house. It was also quite plain that it had not been Thomas she was thinking of when she proposed a face-saving excuse for avoiding it. Mr. Stark’s discomfort was embarrassing to watch.

Or perhaps that sensation was Thomas realizing that he ought to be ashamed of himself for causing it. He wasn’t sure. 

He was considering whether it was too late to bring up the point about Mr. Jarvis when Mr. Stark leaned forward and said, “Hap, pull over. Don’t get on the bridge.”

“Sure, boss,” said the driver. 

“I just realized what a long drive this is,” Mr. Stark explained. “People aren’t going to want to take a cab this far. They’ll decide to drive it, and then they’ll get drunk and try to drive home. We can’t have that. I’m, Iron Man’s a role model. Who else is going to show the kids how to throw a big, boozy orgy in the most responsible way possible? That’s a job for Tony Stark. Have to make sure there’s something about that in the press packet. We have it at the Tower, people can take cabs—if they do drive, they can take a cab home and come back for the car the next day.” He nodded firmly.

Immensely relieved, Thomas said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way, sir, but I’m sure you’re right.”

“We’ll just have to find a way to make the space we have work,” Mr. Stark went on. “We can—you know what we can do? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. We can have one buffet in the common floor and one in the penthouse. Like, uh…OK, the penthouse space is bigger, with the landing pad and everything, so we’ll have the real food up there, and the desserts downstairs.” 

That was a good idea. A good idea that was neither tacky nor insane. “That should work nicely, sir.” Thinking about it, he added, “That would also allow us to use the bars in both places. We’ll probably want to have Champagne at both, but the penthouse bar could feature the gins and classic cocktails, with the liqueurs and after-dinner drinks on the other floor.”

“Perfect! And you know what else?”

“What, sir?”

“That way, we can have four, symmetrical ice sculptures. Two Iron Mans downstairs, and two Towers in the penthouse. _Awesome_.”

#

“Stark,” said Fury, on screen in Tony and Bruce’s astrophysics lab. “We have another STD.”

“Another _what_?” Tony asked.

“Spatio-Temporal Disturbance,” Fury said. “It--”

“Okay,” Tony interrupted. “A, we already know, and B, do you know what else that stands for?”

“Yes, and somehow, you’re the only person in all of SHIELD who has felt the need to be childish about it. I wonder why?”

Ignoring the implied insult, Tony went on, “Except I understand that Spatio-Temporal _Incident_ is the preferred terminology. Or if you want to go old-school, you could call it a—Bruce, what’s a temporal-physics word that starts with V?” Bruce didn’t answer. “Anyway, we don’t have confirmation yet of a spatial element to any of the known disturbances. So it’s just a TD. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t stand for anything funny.”

“As a matter of fact, we do have confirmation of a spatial element for the latest disturbance. It involved the sudden appearance of a small band of Mongol warriors in the New South China Mall, in Dongguan, China, and can we _please_ take the ‘dong’ jokes as read?”

“How does that confirm a spatial element?” Tony asked, as JARVIS pulled up a map of the Mongol empire, with the present-day location of the mall marked. “There were Mongol warriors all over China.”

“Our historians have dated their arms, armor, and insignia to the early 13th century, and they didn’t reach that part of China until almost 70 years later,” Fury answered. “ _Moving on_ , we’re having some trouble getting a team in to investigate—the Chinese government isn’t a signatory to the WSC, and they’re suspicious of our intentions.”

“I’d love to help you out,” Tony said, as JARVIS brought up screensfull of objections, “but I’m still working the kinks out of the suit’s Stealth Mode. It’s a bad time for me to be shot down; I’m having a party in a month.”

“Yes, I thought you might fly under their radar in a less literal way. Stark Industries has a plant on the outskirts of Dongguan.”

“I know we do,” Tony said. “That’s why all the ‘dong’ jokes are already out of my system. So, what, you figure I take the corporate jet in for a big, splashy plant inspection, then sneak away to check out the ST—sorry, I can’t say it. The disturbance site?”

“Yes,” said Fury. “Or, since it occurred in a _mall_ , you can simply say that you’re skipping out on the inspection to go shopping. Since it’s you, no one will be surprised.”

He kind of had a point. “Hey, Bruce! Wanna go to China?”

“Just let me grab my toothbrush,” said Bruce. 

“Actually,” Fury said, “we had in mind to slip in several other SHIELD techs, posing as your personal assistant and other hangers-on. Dr. Banner’s presence might be difficult to explain.”

“Nah,” said Tony. Bruce had been working on the temporal physics with him; he couldn’t let him be left out. “We’ll just make out or something, so it looks like I took him along as my boy-toy.”

“Or,” said Bruce, “we can say that whatever we’re inspecting the plant for has something to do with gamma radiation. My specialty.”

“Sure, if you want the world to think I only have a science boner for you.”

Bruce looked at him.

“As opposed to a regular boner,” Tony explained helpfully.

“The clarification was not really necessary,” Bruce noted. 

“We’ll go,” Tony told Fury. “Just make sure whoever you send with us aren’t total buzzkills.” JARVIS apparently approved of this plan; he displayed the corporate jet’s readiness report. “JARVIS says we can be wheels-up in under two hours. I’ll get back to you if Pepper needs longer than that to establish the cover story.”

The next hour was a flurry of packing, Pepper-placation (she was not pleased at having Stark Industries used as an excuse to send Tony into danger), and science! Still, Tony made the time to stop by the common area to let Thomas know about the trip in person. 

When he got there, he found Thomas sitting at the dining table by himself, with the silver bar tray and cocktail shaker and a jar of silver polish. Before Tony could call out a cheery greeting, he heard Thomas say, “—right, I suppose. I mean, if anyone would know, Captain Rogers would. But I already know everyone I ever knew is dead; I can’t say I’m in a screaming hurry to find out the details.”

At first, Tony thought he must be talking to himself, until JARVIS answered, “It’s certainly your decision. The SHIELD psychiatrist has expressed some concern that your reluctance to find out indicates an unwillingness to adjust to your present circumstances.”

Tony, out of anyone, really ought to have realized—after all, he talked to JARVIS all the time. Still, he didn’t know anyone else who did, not even Pep. 

“Well, bully for her,” Thomas said. “I’ll be more interested in what she has to say on the subject once she’s tried it for herself.” He shook his head. “It isn’t that I miss any of them all that much, or anything like that. It’s just…if I’d gotten a new job and come to America without going into the future, I’d probably never have heard from any of them, either. Maybe a letter or two. They’d just be going on with their lives, and I’d be going on with mine. And that’s more or less what’s happened, isn’t it? Just…with a 90 year gap in the middle.”

Abruptly, Tony backed into the elevator, allowed the doors to close, then, when they opened again, exited while saying, “Heeeeeeeeeeyyyy, Thomas!”

“Sir,” Thomas said, standing up.

“Just wanted to let you know, me and Bruce are heading to China to check out another spatio-temporal thing. No plesiosaurs this time. Mongols. We should be back in a couple of days.”

“Yes, sir. Will you need…provisions for the journey?”

“Nah. We’re taking the corporate jet this time. It has cabin crew. They’ll feed us.”

“Yes, sir.” 

“It’s not a combat op. So, you know, call, if anything comes up. Questions or whatever.”

“I will, sir.”

“And you know what you could do? The guys’ll get pretty bored, with Bruce and me both gone. If there’s anything they can help you with, or if you wanna try teaching them stuff again, that would be cool.” That was true, and he kind of thought Thomas might like hanging out with the ‘bots, too. 

“Certainly, sir. I’ll see what I can come up with. Will there be anything else?”

“Guess not. I’m on my way out the door as soon as Bruce finishes packing.” Tony turned to get back in the elevator.

“Sir!”

“Yes?”

“Shall I reschedule Cannoli Day?”

Tony grinned. “Yeah. Let’s have it the day I get back. Thanks.”

#

It definitely wasn’t Thomas’s imagination; the pace of life in Stark Tower slowed dramatically when Mr. Stark was not in residence. While the house’s schedule was never as full as Downton’s had been, with its four daily meals of varying degrees of formality, frequently punctuated by special events, more days than not there was at least one group meal or other gathering. Cannoli Day, of course, came around like clockwork, and had evolved more or less into afternoon tea, and was usually attended by at least one or two others in addition to Mr. Stark. The household dined together once or twice a week, irregularly, either on meals cooked by Dr. Banner, delivered from a restaurant, or ordered and heated by Thomas. Another once or twice a week they gathered to watch films or play video games, which meant keeping them supplied with beer, popcorn, and other snacks. Nearly every week, Captain Rogers called a meeting of one kind or another in the briefing room, which required coffee and pastries. 

With Mr. Stark—and Dr. Banner—gone, all of that ground to a screeching halt. Thomas decided, after a little consideration and a consultation with Mr. Jarvis, to carry on with Cannoli Day, and have another one upon Mr. Stark’s return. But no one showed up for it; Thomas stood behind the sofa for nearly an hour, watching the coffee and tea get cold and the pastries dry out. He finally gave it up when Ms. Romanoff walked past him without acknowledgement, spent several minutes rummaging around in the kitchen, then, on her way back out, jumped like a scalded cat when she finally noticed him. 

“Where were you when I came in?”

“Right here, miss,” Thomas told her.

“Have you ever had any training as an assassin?”

“No, miss.”

“Lucky for me,” she said. “Next time, make a noise or something.”

Still, the free time did allow him to get a great deal of party-planning done. He and the caterers settled on an arrangement for the buffets and the placement of the small round tables they’d provide for people to sit and eat. This was accomplished through Thomas sketching his ideas onto floor plans displayed on the dinner table; Mr. Jarvis transmitted these to the caterers somehow, and they returned them with suggestions. He’d have to present the chart for Mr. Stark’s approval, but with any luck, he’d accept it as _fait accompli_ and not make any ridiculous amendments. Selections of glassware and china were conducted along similar lines, but Thomas did decide to reschedule the meeting with the head caterer to finalize the menu—she was planning to bring samples, so he didn’t think Mr. Stark would want to miss that.

He’d accomplished enough that, when another invitation from Captain Rogers appeared on his telephone, he decided to accept—even though, this time, he knew what he was getting into. The occasion was another baseball game, and the menu was what Captain Rogers called “real Coney Island hot dogs—Jarvis just found out they’d deliver.”

These turned out to be a sort of sausage in a roll; Thomas had no strong objections, but didn’t entirely understand why Captain Rogers considered them a particular treat. As before, the supply of beer was ample, and conversation during the advertising intervals ranged over a variety of subjects, including the game itself, Captain Rogers’s childhood in the 1940’s, and adjusting to the 21st century. 

It turned out that he’d gotten an educational equivalency certificate of the sort that Dr. Hughes had advised Thomas to get. “It wasn’t really that hard,” he said. “Everyone goes to school through twelfth grade now, and usually college, too, but they don’t cover as much as we did by eighth grade. Have you started studying for yours yet?”

“Ah…no,” Thomas said. “Some books for a correspondence course turned up in the post, but I haven’t really had time to look at them yet.” Really, he was a little insulted by the whole idea—he was over thirty years old and had worked half his life; he didn’t see why he needed a certificate saying he knew how to read and do sums. He hoped he might be able to avoid it entirely.

“Tony’s keeping you that busy?”

“Well, the party and everything,” Thomas said with a shrug. “There are a lot of details to get sorted out.”

“I guess, but it’s not really important. I’ve been to one of Tony’s parties before—everyone will be way too drunk to notice details.”

“I won’t be,” Thomas pointed out. Though he might wish he was. “I do wonder if Mr. Stark has ever read that book.”

“ _Gatsby_? Probably not,” said Captain Rogers. “If he did, he missed the point.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Thomas said, relieved that someone else had noticed. “Gatsby isn’t supposed to be a—” Here Thomas decided to try out an expression he’d asked Mr. Jarvis to explain, after hearing Mr. Stark use it “— _role model_. He wears pink suits and serves Champagne by the bucketful because he’s a tacky little parvenu who doesn’t know any better, not because it’s a _good idea_.”

“Mm,” said Rogers, disagreeing. “I’m not sure that’s _exactly_ what Fitzgerald was trying to say. I mean, yeah, he’s definitely not a role model, and he wasn’t holding up Gatsby’s parties as a blueprint. But I think the book condemns Tom Buchanan’s old-money hypocrisy more than it does Gatsby’s excesses. Gatsby at least had a goal in mind, not just…decadence for its own sake.”

“But his goal was making love to a married woman,” Thomas pointed out. 

“You think? I thought it was…recapturing the past. Maybe it was a past that he only imagined, but…still, I guess I can relate.”

The game resumed, sparing Thomas from having to make an immediate response, but in the next commercial, he argued, “You can’t deny it’s a bit pathetic. Throwing those parties because he hoped Daisy would turn up and…think he was the right sort of man after all.” Possibly not _quite_ as pathetic as allowing himself to be beaten to a pulp for similar reasons. “He’s never going to be out of the top drawer, no matter how much money he has or how big his house is. Even he he’s trying to show off he gets it wrong—like when he brags about having a man in London _buy_ him his shirts. Take it from someone who knows; no gentleman would admit to wearing ready-made shirts if you held hot coals to his eyelids.”

“I’m sure you’d know,” Rogers said. “But in America, it’s not supposed to matter how old your money is or where you came from. It does—always has—but in stories it’s not supposed to. You’re supposed to admire the poor boy who made good, but in real life nobody does. So Fitzgerald has Tom Buchanan—the biggest son of a bitch the whole book—say what everybody’s thinking and points out that Gatsby’ll always be Mr. Nobody from Nowhere.”

Where Thomas came from, no one would have let him forget it—sneering at self-made men was a country sport, like foxhunting or shooting grouse. Even if they managed to get all the moves right, they’d only be accused of aping their betters. “Of course, by English standards, Tom Buchanan is Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, too. The Crawleys—the family I worked for—wouldn’t see much to choose between him and Gatsby.” 

After another brief interval of baseball, Rogers said, “Actually, the more I think about it, the more Tony does kind of remind me of Gatsby. Not the tackiness, I mean. But Gatsby’s surface image was all about decadence and corruption—it wasn’t until what’s-his-name, the guy telling the story, got to see below the surface that he realized Gatsby was ‘all right in the end,’ I think is what he says. And Tony—it’s like he wants everyone to think that he’s a shallow playboy who doesn’t care about anything other than his next drink or his next girl. Maybe he really was like that before he was Iron Man—but I doubt it. He keeps his virtues hidden. I don’t know why.”

“Makes a nice change from the way most people do it, I suppose,” Thomas said. It was true; the Tony Stark of the magazine articles he read had very little in common with the Mr. Stark he worked for. Thomas hadn’t seen a single barely-clothed model—super or otherwise—since he’d been here. Mr. Stark did drink a fair amount—and have ghastly ideas about how to host a party—but the most dissipated thing Thomas had seen him do was drink exotic cocktails while waiting for the sun to rise. And considering he’d done it after spending most of a week capturing a dinosaur—as opposed to, say, spending the night gambling away his fortune—that didn’t strike Thomas as particularly morally bankrupt. “I have to say, I do like how enthusiastic he is, about the party. Where I worked before, you run yourself ragged on things no one cared about. I’ll never forget a dinner party we did for Lady   
Mary’s birthday, just after her come-out. Thirty-six to dine, about half of them young people, dancing afterwards, and a new diamond tiara for her to wear. Mr. Carson worked us all like field slaves making every detail perfect. I remember he made me fold the napkins six times before he was happy with them. Then as I was serving the soup, she said to her dinner partner, ‘Honestly, I don’t know why Mama and Papa bothered. Dinner parties are such a bore.’ I remember thinking I could just shove her face down into her lobster bisque—if I did it quickly enough there wouldn’t be time for anyone to stop me.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Rogers said. “I take it you didn’t?”

“No. I decided it wasn’t worth being sacked. And I thought there was a small chance Mr. Carson might actually murder me.” Musingly, he added, “I suppose in its own way, that was even more ridiculous than the Gatsby party. An entire staff of grown adults scrambling to please a spoilt girl barely three months out of short dresses. Who wasn’t going to be pleased no matter what we did.”

“You’re right, you won’t have that problem with Tony,” Rogers said. “Once he decides something is going to be fun, he has fun. Never thought of that as a saving grace before.”

#

“Let’s try it again,” Thomas was saying, as he sat down at the head of the table.

Tony had just returned from Dongguan, and had caught Thomas unawares again—this time, communing with DUM-E instead of JARVIS. DUM-E held a tray in his claw, with a measuring cup full of water on it; the dinner table was set with soup bowls at each place. Apparently DUM-E was learning to be a waiter now. 

Thomas went on, “I’ll be Mr. Stark, you be you—no! Don’t drop it. You be DUM-E. Not U. His job is coats. Yours is sauce. All right. Begin.”

DUM-E rolled up beside him and held out the tray. Thomas took the measuring cup and poured a little water into the soup bowl. They proceeded around the table, Thomas switching chairs just ahead of DUM-E. At the foot of the table, instead of taking the sauce-that-was-really-water, Thomas held up his hand and shook his head. DUM-E backed up a couple of feet, then rolled up to him with the sauce again. “Remember what I said?” Thomas asked him. “They don’t have to have sauce if they don’t want it. Don’t get upset,” he added as DUM-E started to lower his claw in the beginning of the “sad” subroutine. “Spilling the sauce won’t help anything. Just roll on to the next person.” 

Tony waited until they had made it the whole way around the table before saying, “Hey, DUM-E. Daddy’s home!” 

DUM-E threw the tray aside and raced over, raising and lowering his claw in excitement. Thomas jumped up from his seat and stood with his hands behind his back, looking faintly guilty. 

“That looks like it’s going pretty well,” Tony said. 

“We’ve been practicing, sir,” he said. “He might be nearly ready to try it out on the household…if everyone takes the sauce. He gets a bit insistent about it.”

“Yeah. I think I know where he gets that. One of his jobs in the workshop is bringing me smoothies; JARVIS and Pepper and Bruce have all encouraged him to keep pestering me until I drink them.” 

“Oh,” said Thomas. 

“I can probably figure out a way to explain to him that this is different,” Tony said, with more confidence than he felt. “Or maybe JARVIS can.” Meanwhile, DUM-E rolled over, picked up the tray, and rolled back to offer it to him. “That’s good, DUM-E. Thanks.” 

Thomas took a deep breath. “How was China?”

“Not bad. We got some interesting readings on the new disturbance. And I got some new sunglasses at the mall.” He took them out of his jacket pocket and modeled them.

“Very nice, sir.” 

Tony wondered if he should have gotten him a present. People liked it when you brought them something from a trip. Damn, he could have given him the sunglasses, if he hadn’t just said they were for himself. “But it was a quick trip. Not a lot of time for sight-seeing.”

“I suppose not, sir.” 

“We’re getting kind of an Asgardian vibe from the latest readings,” Tony went on. “Sort of…not entirely unlike what we picked up when their Einstein-Rosen bridge was destroyed. And we know they’re trying to rebuild it, so we’re working on a theory that whatever they’re doing up there is causing the—sudden appearances of butlers, plesiosaurs, and Mongols.”

“Asgardian,” Thomas said. “Those are—Prince Thor’s people?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, suddenly feeling like shit. “But—listen, Thor says they definitely don’t have time travel, so if it is them, they’re not doing it on purpose. It’s just, like, an industrial accident. So we don’t…think they’ll be able to send anybody back. Or anything like that.”

“I see, sir.”

“It’s just, um, it’s kind of good news, in general, because if it is them, they can…stop doing it. Before anyone else gets, you know, displaced.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Sorry,” Tony said lamely. 

“It’s…fine. Now that I’ve gotten settled in here, I don’t know that I’d want to go back, if it were up to me.”

Tony let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “So you—like it here?”

“I believe I do, sir.” 

“Glad to hear it.” It occurred to Tony that he might be glad about that for reasons other than just keeping a butler, but—no funny business. He’d promised Steve. He went on, “Uh, so, did you make any party-progress while we were away?”

“Yes, sir. I rescheduled the meeting with the caterer, but we have several other things ready for your final approval.”

“Awesome.” Tony hefted his overnight bag. “C’mon up and tell me about them while I unpack.”

That turned out to mean Thomas told him about it while _Thomas_ unpacked—something Tony had suspected might happen. It seemed like the sort of thing Steve would give him disapproving looks over, but Tony wasn’t sure why. Tony was, after all, paying Thomas a pretty hefty salary to wait on him; he wasn’t going to object when the man insisted on doing so. 

It turned out that Thomas had the furniture setup and table settings all planned, rental equipment ordered and scheduled for delivery the day before the party, and even the ice sculptor booked. “He’ll need reference photos at least a week in advance,” Thomas added. “Mr. JARVIS has a file prepared, but he thought you might want to make the final selections.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Tony promised. “So, what does that leave? I’ll get the guest list together soon—once I get lists from everybody else, I’ll just have to decide who’s getting press packets and then pick a hundred-fifty or so of my closest friends, no problem.” He snapped his fingers. “We have to figure out what I’m gonna wear. I should have thought of that sooner; I’m going to have to go off-the-rack. What would a twenties guy wear to something like this?”

“A dinner jacket, sir,” said Thomas.

“Dinner jacket” was English-English for a tux; Tony knew that. “No, but, like a _cool_ twenties guy.”

“A dinner jacket.”

“Maybe a…red dinner jacket?” Tony suggested.

“I have it on good authority that a black dinner jacket is sufficient to make even a belted earl look like a bootlegger, sir.”

“Really? Who says that?”

“The Dowager Countess of Grantham. On the occasion of her son the Earl’s appearing for dinner wearing one.”

“What did she _want_ him to wear?”

“Evening dress, sir. White tie. By then it was becoming acceptable for gentlemen to wear black tie when dining with ladies of the family, but to wear it in front of guests was quite daring.”

It was probably a good thing they’d made the pants rule, Tony thought. Bouncing up from the bed, he said, “All right, if you insist—but take a look at my tux; maybe I should get one that’s more twenties-y.”

#

There was no doubt about it; Thomas _had_ to find somewhere to go on his half-days. The sight of Mr. Stark, sprawled on a bed in his undershirt was almost more than he could take. It was all he could do to keep calmly talking about table settings and so on.

He thought he was out of the woods when Mr. Stark got up from the bed, but then things got even worse. As soon as Thomas located the dinner jacket and its associated garments, Mr. Stark began peeling off what few clothes he was wearing, tossing them haphazardly around the room, until he stood there in just an extremely scant pair of drawers and the glowing blue device in his chest. 

At that point, if Mr. Stark had pressed, Thomas would probably have agreed to let him attend his party in spangles and pink feathers. He managed to fumble the dinner trousers off their hanger and hand them to Mr. Stark, who—for no reason Thomas could fathom— _turned around_ before bending over to put them on, giving Thomas a plain view of his barely-covered rump. 

The only saving grace was that, at least, from that position, Mr. Stark couldn’t see the expression on his face. Thomas managed to pull himself together once the trousers were in place, and handed Mr. Stark his shirt. Then there was the fiddly business of doing up the links and studs, which was very nearly torture, with the sight of his nearly-naked body so fresh in Thomas’s mind. 

“So this used to be your job, huh?” Mr. Stark asked. “Helping guys change clothes?”

“I was a valet, sir, yes.” 

“I’m not sure I could do that.” 

What the point of that remark was supposed to be, Thomas had no idea. Mr. Stark would have considerable difficulty as any sort of servant. “I doubt it would suit you, sir. Ah—where’s the waistcoat?”

“It has a cummerbund,” Mr. Stark explained. 

“Oh.” Thomas had encountered those a few times, usually in the possession of gentlemen who had served as officers in India. “A white pique waistcoat would be more…authentic,” he added as he fastened it around Mr. Stark’s waist, remembering that Mr. Stark wanted to know if his costume could be made more _twenties-y_. 

With the addition of the black tie and the jacket, Mr. Stark was now decently clothed—perhaps only the second time Thomas had seen him so—but no less appealing for it. Looking at himself in a mirror that was hung inside the closet door, Mr. Stark said, “I do look pretty good, don’t I?”

“Indeed, sir.” Tearing his eyes away from the mirror, Thomas managed to make a few remarks about the cut of the suit—the shape of the lapels, for example, was not quite like anything Thomas had ever seen before. 

Mr. Stark decided, in the end, to order a new one, which Thomas and Mr. Jarvis helped him select. 

Thomas was fairly pleased with himself for managing to rein in his employer on that essential point—right up until a few days later, when Mr. Stark bounded into the meeting with the caterer and said, “Before we get started with the samples, I have a _great_ idea.”

Thomas and the caterer—a Ms. Flores—exchanged wary looks. 

“In Leo’s movie, all the cater-waiters wear white tails,” Mr. Stark began, and that was enough to fill Thomas with horror. But what was coming was even worse. “I want mine to wear Iron Man red. With gold vests. And maybe gold piping on the trousers, if Jarvis can find a place that sells them in time.”

Ms. Flores just said, “Any special clothing would have to be supplied at your own expense, of course.”

“Sure, yeah. Just get me the sizes.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to _guarantee_ that there would be no last-minute changes in staffing. Of course, if there was a change, I’d do my best to find a substitute who would fit the outfit, but I can’t promise it.”

“Sir,” Thomas said. “I hope you don’t expect me to wear such a…costume.”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Stark said. But before Thomas could be too relieved, he went on, “Yours has to be even more special. I’m thinking flip the color scheme.” He made a twisting gesture with his hands. “Gold, with red vest and piping. That, we’re gonna have to get made, but whatever; I’ll bribe my tailor.”

“No, sir,” said Thomas. He was putting up with a great deal for this party, but there was a limit. He’d hand in his notice first. 

“It’ll be fine,” Mr. Stark said. “I’m his biggest customer.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I am not wearing a gold and red uniform.”

Mr. Stark tilted his head to one side, pouting in a way that should not have been remotely attractive on a grown man. “Aw, c’mon.”

“No, sir.” 

His shoulders slumped. “What about just the red, then?”

“No.” 

“Not even if it’s, like, an understated, _dark_ red?”

“No, sir.” 

With a defeated look, Mr. Stark shook his head. “Okay. Bring on the samples, I guess.” He sighed heavily and gave Thomas a look that seemed designed to make sure Thomas was aware of his employer’s heart breaking.

Ms. Flores began opening the first of several insulated cases. “Will you still be providing the red suits for my staff?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Stark, glancing at Thomas.

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” said Thomas. 

“We’ll let you know,” Mr. Stark said, with another long suffering sigh. 

Ms. Flores agreed, then went on to serving the food samples. “We found that alligator sausage didn’t work particularly well for pigs in blankets—it’s too gamey. I have brought our most successful attempt, here,” she pointed, “but I think you’ll agree that we can do better.”

Mr. Stark tasted one. “Yeah, that’s…not one of my better ideas,” he said, with his mouth full. After chewing for a long moment, he added, “It’s not exactly tender, either, is it?”

“No,” Ms. Flores agreed. “The next option uses ostrich sausage, which we thought we could pair with a spicy creole mustard or curried ketchup. For the other two, we’ve tried incorporating a condiment directly into the appetizer. This one uses boudin sausage with an onion marmalade. And the last one is my favorite; it’s a chicken sausage with apple chutney.”

After trying all of them—and encouraging Thomas to try them as well—Mr. Stark said, “Okay. Yeah, let’s say…twelve dozen of those.”

Ms. Flores asked, “Of….?”

“Just the non-gross ones. Everything except the alligator.”

“We do have ten more appetizers to try,” she pointed out.

“Uh-huh,” Tony said. 

The rest of the meeting went fairly smoothly; it mostly consisted of Mr. Stark liking everything Ms. Flores put in front of him, and getting slightly squiffy on squares of alcohol-laced gelatin. Ms. Flores seemed to find the quantities and variety of food that Mr. Stark ordered surprising, but Thomas wasn’t sure why. It seemed to be about four times as much food as Downton would have planned on for fifty guests.

Of course, at Downton there were plenty of staff to eat anything that was left over. And there always was plenty left over, with the notable exception of the “indoor picnic” the night the oven went out. Thomas resolved to ask Mr. Jarvis, later, if he thought the quantities excessive.

After collecting Mr. Stark’s signature on a contract, Ms. Flores left. Thomas began gathering up the plates and utensils they’d used for the sample-tasting, hoping to avoid any further discussion of gold and/or red livery. 

He was not so lucky. Mr. Stark followed him into the kitchen and leaned against the counter as Thomas put the things in the dishwasher. “Is there any wiggle room on the gold suit?”

Unbidden, Thomas pictured Mr. Stark dressed in gold and wiggling. “I don’t believe so, sir.”

“Because I don’t want to insult you or anything. But would bribery help?”

“I’m not insulted, sir, but no, it would not help.” Actually, Thomas was kind of pleased—no one had ever offered him a bribe before. Blackmail, yes. Bribery, no.

“You sure? It wouldn’t have to be cash. I could invite the supermodel of your choice to the party for you.” He paused. “Okay, that sounded less skeevy in my head. Or…trip anywhere you want to go in the corporate jet. Just brainstorming.”

Thomas considered what it would take to get him into a gold dinner jacket with red piping. If it was the only way to avoid being sent back to the Front, he’d wear it and be happy, but that was all he could think of. “I’m afraid not, sir.” 

Mr. Stark looked so convincingly dejected that Thomas almost wavered. 

Perhaps he had better offer a compromise. “I suppose I could be talked into a red waistcoat. A understated, dark red,” he added. The waistcoat for his Downton livery had had a bit of green in it, so it wasn’t unprecedented.

“How about—red with little gold Iron Man helmets printed on it?”

“ _No_. Sir. Red, with a very fine gold stripe. That’s as far as I’ll go. I’ll ask Mr. Jarvis to help me find a suitable fabric.” He wasn’t going to leave that up to Mr. Stark; God knew what he’d end up wearing.

#

“Hey, Cap-a-rama,” Tony said as he entered the gym. “Fancy meeting you here.” He knew Steve was there, of course—he’d asked JARVIS.

“Hi, Tony,” Steve said, not even grunting as he did bicep curls with weights that Tony knew—because he’d designed them—weighed as much as a small car. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“I actually didn’t _mean_ to miss the house meeting this time,” Tony told him. “I just got busy. Science-ing. I was going to ask everybody for their lists for the party, and now I have to go around finding everybody one at a time.” Well, asking Steve and Thor one at a time—everyone else was comfortable answering an email. 

“Lists of what?” Steve asked.

“Guests,” Tony explained. “I figured I’d start with you guys’ lists and then fill in the rest. Cause you…don’t know as many people as I do.” That didn’t sound quite right out loud, either. “I mean, close friends of anybody on the team will be the A list.” 

“All my close friends already live here,” Steve said. 

To be honest, all of Tony’s did, too. Except Pepper and Happy and Rhodey. And maybe Agent, if you wanted to stretch the definition of “friend.”

But Steve was still talking. “It wasn’t the meeting I wanted to talk to you about, anyway. Are you sure you’re not working Thomas too hard, with the party?”

Tony blinked. “Not that I know of.” Steve probably wouldn’t have brought it up if he didn’t think otherwise, though.

“Because I asked him if he’d started working on his GED yet, and he said he hadn’t had time, with all the party work he was doing.”

“That kind of sounds like something I’d say when you ask me if I’ve done something and I don’t want you to get all Captain Sad-facey,” Tony pointed out. “’cause I don’t think he’s that busy. It’s like two, three meetings a week, and he’s usually doing something else while we have them.”

Steve put down the equivalent-of-a-Honda he was lifting. “Think about that for a minute, Tony.”

Tony did. “Oh. But he hasn’t said anything.”

“Yeah, apparently he finds you easier to please than the spoiled teenage girl where he used to work.”

“He said that?”

“Not in so many words. There was a story attached.”

“He tells you stories now?” It was hard not to be jealous.

“He came over to watch the game while you were away.”

He was definitely jealous. “He never hangs out with me. Or do you mean he, like, came over and dusted your apartment while you watched the game?”

“No. He came over, sat on the couch, ate a hot dog, and watched the game.” 

“How did you manage that? He won’t even sit down for movie night!” 

“It probably helps that I’m not his boss,” Steve pointed out. “Next I’m going to try getting him out to a museum or Central Park or something. I don’t think he’s gone anywhere since he’s been here except to buy cigarettes and things for the house.”

Tony had a thought that was wonderful and terrible at the same time. “You guys aren’t, like… _dating_ , are you?”

“No! I know it’s hard for you to believe, but some of us enjoy spending time with people we aren’t trying to get into bed.”

“I got kind of a vibe from him, once or twice,” Tony admitted. Like when he’d been trying on his tux. “And you’re always reminding me, sex wasn’t invented in the 1960’s.”

Steve said, “No, but he seems like a regular guy to me.” Then he got all adorably embarrassed and added, “Not—I mean, gays are regular guys, I know. Nothing wrong with it. But he just doesn’t come across that way. To me.” 

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I’m not completely sure I trust your gaydar, Captain Not That There’s Anything Wrong With It.”

“I know there’s nothing wrong with it! But he—plays sports, and he was in the war, and…I’m just digging myself in deeper here, aren’t I?” Steve realized.

“Yep,” Tony said. He did wonder what other evidence Steve would come up with that Thomas was a “regular guy,” if Tony gave him enough rope, but he took pity and changed the subject. “You’re probably right,” he admitted. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

“Well, unless you want him to run screaming for the hills, keep your wishes to yourself,” Steve advised.

#

As the date of the party grew closer, the pace of the preparations sped up. It had all seemed quite manageable when Thomas was handling one aspect of the party at a time—ordering tables and linens from the rental place, for example, was an unfamiliar task, but straightforward enough once he got started. And he’d been taken by surprise by the need to arrange for security and parking, but Mr. Alvarez had proved quite helpful, indicating that several members of the regular security staff would be pleased to “moonlight” as bouncers and parking attendants. 

But in the final week before what Mr. Stark insisted on referring to as “P-Day,” Thomas was bombarded with questions and requests for clarification of details on aspects he had thought were handled in the preceding weeks: did he want six chairs at each table, or eight? Should the assorted miniature pastries he’d ordered from their regular bakery be arranged on mixed trays, or separate trays for each kind? A cold snap in some part of the world Thomas had never heard of had caused a global shortage of one type of flower they’d selected for the arrangements; would Mr. Stark like to pay nearly twice as much as had been agreed, or would he prefer that the florist substitute some other variety? In what “time window” did he want the rented furnishings and equipment delivered the day prior: 8 AM to noon or 1 to 5 PM? 

It was this last question that threw Thomas into a panic. To answer it, he had to sit down and come up with a schedule for P-Day and P-Day minus one. It was the first time he’d seen the full picture of how much he had to do—or at least arrange and supervise—over the course of less than two days. An early version of his schedule demonstrated that he might just be able to manage it, if the delivery crew arrived promptly at 8 AM, which he was given to understand was unlikely. 

Then Mr. Jarvis said, “Mr. Barrow, it occurs to me that it would be wise for you to sleep at some point during the 36 hours leading up to the party.”

He took another look at his schedule, and realized he had omitted that detail. “Oh, God,” he groaned. “This is impossible. I’m going to be humiliated. And sacked. And possibly have a heart attack.”

“Mr. Barrow, I’m going to give you some advice I’ve often had reason to give Mr. Stark: you must learn to delegate.”

“Delegate to _who_?” Thomas nearly shrieked. “It’s just you, me, and the robots. And they’re worse than not having any help at all. I’m sorry,” he added, when he perceived an icy quality in Mr. Jarvis’s invisible presence. “But they are. For anything they haven’t practiced fifty times before, at least.” What he wouldn’t give to have Jimmy and Alfred here. Hell, at this point, he’d even take Bates—he might not be able to carry anything, but he could at least direct the delivery people, sort out the florist, and answer the telephone.

Speaking of the telephone, it rang, the catering company’s logo appearing on the screen. Restraining the impulse to throw it against the wall, Thomas answered it.

“Thomas, good, I’m glad I caught you,” Ms. Flores said. “I just realized that with Stark Tower being open-plan, there’s no obvious place for my staff to leave their belongings and take their breaks.”

“What?” Thomas said dully. 

“I can’t ask them to pile up their coats and purses in a corner of the kitchen; not if guests will have access to that area. And it works best for them to take their breaks somewhere the guests can’t see them—otherwise, people try to ask them for things, and it gets messy.”

The kitchen problem was not news to Thomas, but, “What do they need _breaks_ for?”

“Counting setup and teardown, your event will exceed eight hours,” Ms. Flores said. “They’re entitled to two fifteen minute breaks and a half-hour lunch.”

“It’s in the evening,” Thomas pointed out. 

“The legally-required meal break is called lunch, whatever time it takes place. I certainly hope Mr. Stark doesn’t have any intention of violating state and federal labor laws.”

“No. No, of course not. Ah. Fine. They can put their things, and have their breaks in my apartment.” He certainly wouldn’t be using it himself. “It’s on floor eighty-nine, so that should be convenient. And Mr. Jarvis will—that is, we’ll set their security badges to allow them access.” Thomas had learned that he wasn’t supposed to discuss Mr. Jarvis’s full abilities with outsiders; they were more comfortable believing that his functions were carried out automatically. “Will that suit?”

“Yes, that sounds fine.” Saying she’d see him the day of the party, Ms. Flores rang off.

His hand still on the telephone, Thomas lowered his head to the cool surface of the table. A split second later, he sat bolt upright. “ _Coats_! Mr. Jarvis, where on God’s green Earth are the guests going to put _their_ coats?”

#

“So it turns out you were right,” Tony said as soon as Steve opened the door to his apartment.

“I’m shocked,” Steve said, stepping back to allow Tony inside. “That you’re admitting it, I mean. What was I right about?”

“Thomas is having some kind of epic party-related meltdown,” he explained. “JARVIS just showed me the footage. I mean, it’s kind of a restrained, British butler type meltdown, but—yeah. I screwed up. Go ahead and gloat.”

Ignoring that, Steve said, “I assume you didn’t come here just so I could gloat. How do you want me to help?”

“Well, first I need you to talk him down off the ledge. Make sure he understands it’s not the end of the world if something goes wrong. Do your time-travel bros thing.”

“My what?”

“You know. Like how me and Bruce are science bros and Nat and Clint are assassin bros. You guys are the time travel bros. Thor’s the only one who doesn’t have a bro now—but he does have a girlfriend. And an actual brother, who’s kind of homicidal, so—shutting up now.”

“I can talk to Thomas,” Steve agreed. “Was there something else?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “The actual meltdown happened when he was writing down everything he has to do on P-Day and P-day minus one.”

“I wish you wouldn’t--” Steve began, then shook his head. “Never mind. Not a hill I want to die on. It’s too much?”

“Yeah—he, like, I guess he has to be there for all of the stuff that’s being delivered and set up…and put up the decorations…and I haven’t even mentioned how we have to go through the common area and my apartment and put away everything we don’t want drunk people stealing, breaking, or puking on. So I need you to call an emergency house meeting so we can each take, you know, a couple things off his plate.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Steve said, “you want to call a house meeting so all of us superheroes can figure out who’s going to hang streamers for _your_ party.”

“I said you guys could invite people too!” Granted, only Thor had taken him up on that—the aforementioned girlfriend. “And you passed up the chance to gloat when it was offered to you. We are now beyond the gloating stage.” He paused. “Also, there aren’t any streamers. I’m not _six_. But there are party lights. I kind of thought Clint could do those—he’s good at climbing stuff.”

Steve sighed. “Fine. I’ll call the meeting for--” Steve glanced at his watch. “Let’s say six. But you know Thomas thinks we have to have coffee and Danish for meetings, and I’m dragging him out of the house for a couple of hours, so you’re in charge of that. Make sure there are plates.”

“Okay,” Tony agreed. He could get JARVIS to order pastry. And he was aces at making coffee. Plates, he could probably figure out. 

“And—just by the way—you don’t get to decide when I’m allowed to gloat.”

#

“That’s very kind of you,” Thomas said, making a superhuman effort to keep his tone level. “But I’m really rather busy right now.” After a cup of tea, and assurances from Mr. Jarvis that coat racks could be obtained from the rental place, and either a security man or a cater-waiter could be assigned to staff them, he felt very nearly calm, but not quite calm enough to cope with Captain Rogers trying to drag him off for a walk in the park, of all things.

“That’s all the more reason you need a break,” Captain Rogers insisted.

Thomas didn’t see how he figured that. “I really can’t. Mr. Jarvis--”

“Agrees you should go,” Mr. Jarvis interrupted. “I trust you agree I can keep things under control here for an hour or two.”

Thomas couldn’t entirely agree—it wasn’t things going wrong over the next hour or two that he was concerned about—but he couldn’t exactly argue, either. Mr. Jarvis was the butler; he was the under-butler. “I’ll get my coat,” he said.

A half-hour later, he did feel a bit better. It seemed like half of New York was out in Central Park, enjoying the crisp, autumn day. And few, if any, of them would know or care if Mr. Stark’s party turned out to be an utter disaster. The knowledge was comforting. The sights of the park also served as a welcome distraction. Many of the people were engaged in activities he recognized—there were courting couples walking hand-in-hand, others walking dogs or pushing prams. But several details were strange. One couple had matching poison-green hair, stiffened somehow into spikes, his marching in a line down the center of his otherwise-shaved head, hers circling her brow like the crown of New York’s famous Statue of Liberty. And one of the prams was being pushed by two blokes—white blokes—and contained an Asian baby. And—“Does that woman have Mr. Stark’s _helmet_ tattooed on her _bosom_?”

Captain Rogers glanced that way. “Yes. It might be fake—they’re part of our licensed merchandising line, for kids. You just rub them on, like a decal, and it washes off.”

“Oh,” Thomas said, relieved.

“But it could be real. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

As they walked, Captain Rogers bought them two oversized pretzels from a cart. “So—how’s the party planning going?”

Thomas had hoped he wouldn’t bring it up. “Fine,” he lied.

“Jarvis thought you might be kinda…uh, overwhelmed.”

Oh, God. “It’s quite a responsibility, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“Okay. Because Tony…has this tendency to start doing something and then not stop until he falls over. Which, on the battlefield, is fine. I mean, that’s what you have to do. You know.”

“I do,” Thomas said. 

“But Tony pretty much operates like that all the time. Well, half the time. He’s either working flat out or he’s lying around like a house cat. Jarvis and the robots are perfect for him, because they can keep up with him.”

Thomas had a sudden fear that Captain Rogers had brought him out here to sack him. Or to suggest, delicately, that he might be happier elsewhere, which amounted to the same thing. “I’m used to working hard.” 

“I’m sure you are. But with Tony, you have to tell him when he’s being ridiculously demanding.” 

“I couldn’t possibly,” Thomas said. 

“You have to. He’s never had a job—apart from being Tony Stark, which, yeah, is work, but he doesn’t answer to anybody except himself. He has no idea how much time and effort things take. The same thing happened with Ms. Potts, and when Natasha was undercover as his PA—long story. The point is, he’ll just keep piling work onto you and figure that as long as you aren’t complaining, it isn’t a problem. Then when you do complain, he’ll apologize profusely, buy you something expensive, and then turn right around and do it again.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever been encouraged to complain _more_ before.” Carson was probably spinning around in his grave. 

“You can tell Jarvis, if you’re not comfortable talking to Tony. Or me, or Ms. Potts, if Jarvis doesn’t get it—I think if he’s overworked, Tony just throws in a new processor or RAM chip or something. I don’t exactly know what those things are, but I think Jarvis has them. The point is, Tony’s party isn’t a matter of life or death. If you have to scale things back, or get more help, he’ll understand.”

Thomas supposed he had a point. Partially. “It’s a little late to do either, now, I think,” he pointed out, evading the issue of whether he was or was not, in fact, in over his head. 

“It’s a little late, but not too late,” Captain Rogers disagreed. “Jarvis said it was mostly the day before the party, and the day of, that things are going to get crazy?”

“Yes,” Thomas admitted. There was no point trying to hide it if Mr. Jarvis had already told. The sneak. “I started making a list of everything I had to do those two days, and I’m not sure how I’ll find the time for it all. There’s only so much that can be done in advance.”

“Uh-huh. For starters, how much is there on that list for Tony to do?”

“Mr. Stark? I have to put him in his dinner jacket at half-past seven on the day of. And hope he doesn’t have any more _ideas_ before then.”

“Yeah, no,” said Captain Rogers. “It’s his party; he can do some of the work. The man has five PhDs; he can handle setting up a few tables. For instance.”

Thomas tried, and failed, to imagine Lord Grantham or even Mr. Matthew _setting up tables_. “The rental company crew are supposed to set them up. I just need to tell them where. And watch to make sure they do it right. Mr. Jarvis could, but people don’t listen to him, and….” He shook his head. “I’m hoping I can supervise them and hang the lights at the same time.”

“Okay, supervising the delivery guys? Tony can _definitely_ do that. Especially with Jarvis helping. And the rest of us can help, too, with whatever you need us for.”

“I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that,” Thomas protested. 

“Tony can. As much as I hate putting the idea in his head, we are all living rent-free in his house. He’s entitled to ask for a favor or two.”

Something about that didn’t quite sound right to Thomas, but Captain Rogers seemed convinced of it. And he was, Thomas had been told, the team leader. 

“So start thinking about what you can delegate,” Rogers went on, “where telling us what you want done won’t be more work than just doing it yourself.”

#

The house meeting featured far less gloating and pillorying of Tony Stark than Tony would have expected. Things got off to an unpromising start, with Clint taking one look at the plate of doughnuts Tony had put out and saying, “Catering’s going downhill.”

Thomas sort of shrank back against the doorway, and Steve said briskly, “Yes, but Tony fixed it all by himself, so we have to make allowances.”

“That’s right,” Tony said. “I did.”

“Not _all_ by yourself, sir,” said JARVIS. 

“I did it with some help from JARVIS,” he amended. “Who I _built_ all by myself. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic, sir.” 

Then Steve used his Captain Voice to get Thomas to sit down at the briefing table with them. Thomas looked a little uncertain about it, but no one could resist the Captain Voice. He sat. Cap poured a cup of coffee from the pot and pushed it across the table to Thomas. 

“Thomas comes to house meetings now?” Natasha asked.

“He probably should, since he lives here,” Bruce remarked. “Anyway, what’s the emergency?”

“Perhaps Tony’s laundry has spawned new life,” Thor suggested.

“Ha,” Tony said. “No, it’s--”

Steve interrupted, “Tony’s big party is coming up in six days, so we’re meeting to talk about how we can all pitch in and make it a success.”

That wasn’t at all how Tony would have expected him to put it—more like “Tony’s fucked up again, so we have to figure out how we’re going to pull his fat out of the fire.” But Tony wasn’t arguing.

“We do?” Bruce asked. 

“Yes,” Steve said firmly. “Because we all live here, too.”

“I was kind of thinking I’d just hang out in my apartment that night,” Bruce said.

“Aw, Bruce,” Tony began, but Steve interrupted _again_.

“That’s fine, but there are a lot of things that need to be done before the guests arrive. Thomas, you have a list?”

“I do,” Thomas said, then stopped.

It took some coaxing from Cap to get him to actually divulge the list, but in the end he did. Once it was all out on the table, it was pretty obvious why he freaked out. It was also pretty obvious that he found it kind of a little mortifying to admit that he didn’t have everything under control. He kept saying things like, “But perhaps I might do that earlier,” and “If X takes less time than anticipated, I’ll have enough time for Y.” 

Eventually, Tony had to jump in. “Yeah, so, this is kind of my fault. Thomas is so awesome I forgot he can’t, like, _actually_ be in three different places at once. Next time we do something like this, we’ll get you some minions,” he told Thomas. “SI interns, or temps, or something. I don’t know exactly where you get party minions. There might be an agency. Anyway. There’s no time to find out for _this_ party, so we’re just gonna have to build a stage in the old barn and put on a show, kids.”

“Thanks, Tony,” said Steve. “And yes, I understood that reference. Natasha, how would you feel about supervising the setup of the dance floor on the landing pads? All you have to do is point out where things are supposed to go—JARVIS has a diagram—and glare at the workmen in an intimidating manner.”

“You’ll be great at that,” Tony said helpfully. 

“I guess I can handle that,” she said, shooting Tony a fairly mild glare. “But you owe me.”

The rest of the tasks were divvied up in a similar manner. Tony was saddled with a longer list than anyone except Thomas, including primary responsibility for hiding the valuables, breakables, and good liquor, but he figured he’d better not complain. 

At the end of the meeting, Clint raised his hand. “I got a question.” He looked at Thomas. “Have you had a _day off_ since you got here?”

“An entire day?” Thomas asked. “No, why would I?”

So that was how they found out that Thomas was not entirely familiar with the concept of a weekend. He’d heard of it, but his primary association seemed to be “time you do even more work than usual because the people you work with are having people over.” He thought that one evening every two weeks was more than enough time off for anyone—and he hadn’t even been taking that.

“Okay,” said Tony. “As soon as the party’s over, you’re taking a week off. Or two. Ten days, minimum. You can borrow one of the cars—actually, no, you can’t, because you don’t have a driver’s license,” he realized. “We’ll figure something out.” 

“That isn’t necessary, sir,” Thomas said.

“It kind of is,” Tony said. “Our latest Starkphone roll-out is making a big deal out of how our products are not produced in sweatshops. If it gets out that I’m violating labor laws seven days a week in my own home, the media shitstorm will not be pretty.”

#

After the meeting, Thomas had a number of questions for Mr. Jarvis, including what a “media shitstorm” was (a graphic metaphor for yellow journalism, fortunately), and a “sweatshop.” Once the latter concept was explained to him, it was difficult not to be insulted by the suggestion that it might apply to his own work situation—he was, after all, a highly skilled professional. 

The labour laws Mr. Stark spoke of seemed like a nice enough idea, in theory—even if they also sounded like something Tom Branson would love. Practically, though, he couldn’t imagine how forty hours a week was enough to get anything _done_. Granted, before the party had descended upon him, he’d had to look for ways to fill his days—but he’d been trying to fill them, not to periodically interrupt a life of leisure with a spot of light buttling. 

Still, Thomas had always privately thought he’d be well-suited to a life of leisure. He might be able to adjust. But the idea of taking two days off, in a _row_ , every _week_ , was just madness.

The run-up to the party left the matter comfortably abstract, anyway. Even with the household “pitching in,” as Captain Rogers put it, there was still plenty to do. On P-day minus one, the common floor and penthouse were entirely transformed, the existing furniture rearranged (and in some cases removed entirely) to make room for the rented tables and chairs, the buffets, and, of course, the ice sculptures. These would not actually be placed until an hour before the party was due to start, but the ice sculptor came in advance to install lighted platforms for them—and then Mr. Stark spent several hours sprawled on the carpet in his undershirt, modifying them to cycle through a variety of colours. Thomas became quite used to stepping over him. 

Still, it was not long past 7 PM when Thomas was finished for the day. He made a last tour through the party areas, looking for anything that needed to be put right and thinking about the next day’s work. Out on the terrace, the song about how a party never killed anyone was blaring through the speakers, and Mr. Stark was on the dance floor, practicing what Thomas supposed must be dance moves. Or possibly martial arts ones. It was difficult to tell, but although Thomas didn’t have much experience with martial arts, he didn’t think it would require moving one’s hips quite like _that_.

Thomas felt that he ought not to be watching, but couldn’t tear his eyes away. Mr. Stark wore only a sleeveless undershirt and tight black trousers, despite the chill of the evening, and the outfit—while obviously indecent—displayed his trim waist and muscular shoulders to great advantage. 

The song ended, and Mr. Stark stooped to pick up a shirt he’d apparently abandoned at some point during his…practice. Using it to mop perspiration from his face, he said, “Hey, Thomas. Just, you know, testing out the floor.”

“I hope it’s satisfactory, sir,” Thomas managed to say. 

“Yeah—it’s great. Wow, OK, it’s chilly out here when you’re not moving.” He put the shirt on, but didn’t button it. “I don’t know about you, but I’m goin’ in.”

Thomas, being fully clothed, was not particularly cold, but he went in as well. 

Mr. Stark went to the bar—nearly emptied, in readiness for the supply of cheaper liquor that would be delivered tomorrow—and poured a healthy measure from a last, lonely bottle of Mr. Stark’s usual whiskey. “This is almost kicked,” he said, grabbing another glass and emptying the bottle. “Here, drink this one—you’ll be doing me a favor; that’s one less bottle I have to hide.”

Thomas took the glass without much hesitation; he was growing accustomed to Mr. Stark’s insistence that he eat or drink whatever Mr. Stark was having. Taking a sip, he said, “Well, sir, I believe everything will come together quite nicely, tomorrow.”

Reaching behind himself, Mr. Stark rapped his knuckles on the wooden surface of the bar. “Yeah. Everything looks great. Almost seems like a shame to have two hundred drunks come in and mess it all up.” 

“Sir?” If Mr. Stark decided to cancel his party—or even just not show up—Thomas thought he might scream. 

“It’ll be fun, once it gets started,” Mr. Stark said. “I used to go to parties like this just about every weekend,” he added, gesturing vaguely at the room. “Dance, talk to people, get shitfaced drunk, pick up a girl or three…it’s been a while. When I was putting together the guest list, you know what I thought? I thought, let’s start with everybody from the old days that I’d really like to see. Came up with sixteen names.” 

Thomas shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Sir,” he said, and then stopped. He had no idea how to finish that sentence. 

“And then, like, a dozen more who _aren’t_ from the old days,” Mr. Stark added quickly. “So that’s fine. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to have time to really talk to two hundred people anyway. I don’t know. I guess I just—” He stopped talking, abruptly, and downed the rest of his whiskey. “Whoa, that was a major downer. That’s OK. Getting it out of my system now. Don’t want to be a big ball of angst at my party. That’s not sexy.”

Still not knowing what to say, and not particularly wanting to try “sir” again, Thomas just cleared his throat.

“We’re good,” Mr. Stark added. “Everything looks great. I think I’m just…you know how, the day after a party, when you get up and you’re just like…well, I spent a week looking forward to that, and now it’s over. You know how that feels?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. For him, it was more like, “I spent a week working to make that happen, and now it’s over,” but he knew the feeling. “Like—Champagne that’s gone flat.”

“Yeah.” Mr. Stark nodded. “A lot like that. Anyway. Maybe I’m just getting that out of the way early.”

Indeed, by the next morning—or at any rate, by the time Mr. Stark got out of bed and put in an appearance in the common area—he seemed to have bounced back. He bustled about with almost manic cheer, poking his fingers into things, wheedling Dr. Banner into attending the party, and generally bothering people who were trying to work. Thomas was glad to see him do it. 

He was still underfoot at five o’clock, when the catering crew arrived to begin setting up. They seemed awed to be meeting _the_ Tony Stark. One young woman asked him to autograph her telephone—which he did, cheerfully—and a young man said, under his breath, “Oh. My. God. He’s even hotter in person.”

Thomas shot him a glare—he understood the impulse, but there was such a thing as _discretion_. Thomas was entirely sure he’d never been that obvious, not even when he was as young as the waiter seemed to be. At least Mr. Stark appeared not to have heard, although it seemed like Ms. Flores and many of the young man’s co-workers must have done.

“If that’s all,” Thomas said, once Mr. Stark had finished signing the phone, “perhaps we should be getting started.”

Much of the next two hours was spent showing the catering staff where things were, and prodding them into action when they paused in their work to stare at the house or the Avengers, or to take pictures of either with the ever-present telephones. 

The young man who thought Mr. Stark was “even hotter in person” even took a picture of _Thomas_ , while he was in the middle of suggesting firmly that they might want to consider putting their telephones away and doing a little work. 

“Sorry,” he said with an insolent shrug. “But no one’s ever going to believe I got chewed out by an English butler with cheekbones that could cut paper if I don’t have pictures.”

Thomas ground his teeth in frustration and sent a silent apology to Mr. Carson for whatever he had done to deserve this. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Timothy. Timothy Brandon.”

“Give me the phone, Timothy,” he said, holding his hand out.

“What?”

“You, too,” he told the others who were nearby. “You’ll get them back when you’ve finished work.”

“But what if somebody _calls_ me?” asked a young woman. 

“They’ll have to call back later.”

“But what if it’s, like, an emergency?”

“Then they should telephone a doctor, not a waitress.” 

Another shock came when Thomas went into his room to get changed into his dinner jacket (and red waistcoat) for the party. The catering crew apparently took that as the signal to don the red livery Mr. Stark had decided, eventually, to provide, and he emerged from his bedroom to find his sitting room occupied by half a dozen men and women who apparently saw no reason _not_ to change their clothing in a mixed group. He opened his mouth to object, then shook his head and closed it again. He was in no way responsible for the morals of the catering staff—and thank God for that. 

He went in search of Mr. Stark, and found him in the penthouse, deep in conversation with the ice sculptor, whose two assistants were maneuvering a sculpture of the Tower into place. 

“—cooling pad to the base; should extend the life of the sculptures four, five hours. I’ll send you the schematics,” Mr. Stark was saying.

“Okay,” the man said. “I really appreciate that, Mr. Stark. Now—Dion, if you drop that, I’m going to drop you off the balcony!” he bellowed at one of the assistants.

Thomas took advantage of the distraction of Mr. Stark’s conversational partner to say, “This might be a good time for you to get dressed, sir.” 

Mr. Stark looked down at himself. “Oh. Right, tux, yeah. On it.”

#

Tony was a little surprised to come out of the shower to find Thomas waiting in his bedroom, with Tony’s new tux laid out over the back of a chair. Not that he _minded_ , but waiting around to help him get dressed seemed like a strange priority for a guy who, less than a week ago, had been freaking out over being too busy to eat or sleep on this particular day. 

“Lookin’ good,” Tony said, dropping his towel and going to the dresser for some underwear. Thomas had already put on _his_ tux, and he looked like he’d been born wearing it. 

“Thank you, sir,” Thomas said. In the mirror above the dresser, Tony could see that he was politely averting his eyes from the wonder that was Tony Stark.

Well, if he was going to be that way. Tony put on some silk boxers, then layered the rest of the _ensemble_ over them—pants with a satiny stripe down the side, check. Pleated shirt with funny collar, check. White vest, check—even though he wasn’t entirely sure what the _point_ was; who’d even see it over a white shirt? Thomas fussed with the little belt at the back for far longer than Tony thought was reasonable. 

He tied Tony’s tie for him, too, which he did kind of appreciate. “Thanks,” he said. “I suck at tying bow-ties. Sometimes I just get the already-tied ones, but then you can’t, you know, untie it at the end of the night and look like Sinatra. Wait, do you understand that reference?”

“No, sir, but if it persuades you not to wear a made-up tie, I’m in favor of it.”

Tony _tsk_ ed. “JARVIS is a bad influence on you. I like it.” 

“Your jacket, sir?”

Tony turned around to let Thomas put it on him. “So, what do you have to do next? We’re, uh—half hour or so until liftoff?”

“Yes, sir. I believe everything’s in order, but I’ll be walking through making a final check on everything.”

“Good. Cool. I’ll go with you. I kinda feel like I should go with you. Unless there’s something else I need to be doing?”

“That’s fine, sir.”

They walked through. In the penthouse, cater-waiters were scurrying to put the finishing touches on trays of desserts, and the bartender was dropping tiny plastic swimmers into fishbowls of blue punch. Outside, the band was doing sound checks, and more cater-waiters were lighting candles on the tables. Tony didn’t see anything that looked wrong, but several times, Thomas darted over to speak sharply to some hapless minion. 

“ _Trim_ the wicks before you light them,” Tony heard him say to one of the candle-lighting waiters. “We don’t want the flames to be two inches tall, do we?”

His tone of confidence and command was kind of sexy. To distract himself from it, Tony wandered over to talk to the band, going over the playlist one more time: jazz standards to begin, moving into some swing toward the middle of the evening, and a few numbers from the soundtrack to Leo and Baz’s _Gatsby_. Preferably when Leo and/or Baz were outside. 

Catching up with Thomas again, Tony accompanied him down to the common floor, where they were met with a similar scene, except that the waiters were putting out canapés, salads, turkey, and ham instead of desserts, and the bartender was arranging Champagne glasses into a pyramid. Thomas buzzed doing things like rotating one of the flower arrangements twelve and half degrees. It did look better after he was done, though Tony could not have said why, even with a gun to his head. 

“Mr. Stark,” the girl whose phone Tony had autographed said, coming up to him with a serious expression. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

Tony hoped this wasn’t a come-on. Which was kind of a strange sensation, for him. “Okay.”

“Your butler stole our phones.”

“Whose phones?”

“Everybody’s. All of us from CJF, I mean.”

All the cater-waiters, Tony translated. “Now, when you say stole, you mean stole-stole, or…?”

“He hid them somewhere. He said he’d give them back at the end of the night.”

“Ah,” Tony said. “Thomas?” he called.

Thomas came over. “Sir.”

“This young lady says you confiscated the catering crew’s phones?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good one. A lot of my guests would rather not have unflattering photos of them sold to the tabloids.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Thomas, with a sideways glance at the cater-waitress.

“You put ‘em somewhere safe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Glad we cleared that up.”

The girl went back to work, muttering something Tony was clearly meant to overhear, about how she’d _thought_ he was cool. 

Shortly after that, the press invitees started to arrive, followed not long after by the geekier end of the guest list—the ones who didn’t understand the idea of “fashionably late” any more than they understood the idea of “fashionably anything else.” The latter ended up trailing along like ducklings as Tony pointed out sights of interest to the press crew. That seemed all right to Tony—once things got into full swing, the geeks would probably hide out in the library with Bruce, and at least this way they’d be able to say they’d seen everything. Including Tony posing for pictures with the Iron Man ice sculptures.

#

For the first hour or so of the party, which had been slated to begin at 8 PM, Thomas thought that it might not be a success. Everything was perfectly arranged, the buffet tables were well-stocked, and the bartenders mixing elaborate cocktails. But instead of the horde of drunken revelers Mr. Stark was expecting, the party was sparsely attended by a few dozen well-behaved people, who tended to form small clusters discussing scientific concepts Thomas had never heard of. 

Apart, that is, from “spatio-temporal anomaly” and “Einstein-Rosen Bridge.” Those, Thomas had heard of, and they tended to come up a lot. 

At one point, Thomas overheard Timothy complaining to one of his colleagues, “Is this it? I thought Stark parties were more…epic.”

Thomas bristled at the insult, but privately, he was a little worried himself. The scene did not look much at all like the films Mr. Stark had shown him, nor like the films of Mr. Stark’s previous parties that Mr. Jarvis had shared. 

By nine o’clock, he was concerned enough to seek out Mr. Stark and ask, delicately, if everything was as he wished it to be. Thomas had no idea what he could do about it if Mr. Stark’s faster friends had chosen not to come, but he felt he ought to see if there was _something_. 

But Mr. Stark just said, “Hm? Oh, yeah. Things should start get going in an hour or so.”

“Sir?”

“The party scene types don’t come out this early,” he explained. “If it still looks like this at midnight? I’ll cry. But it won’t.”

He was right. Within the hour, the party rooms began filling up. Most of the new arrivals were dressed in styles Thomas gathered were somehow associated with the nineteen-twenties—though most of them, he recognized only from the _Gatsby_ movies. The women went in for dresses above their knees, usually decorated with beads or fringe—or sometimes fringe made of beads. There were more feather boas than Thomas had ever seen in his life, including a girlie show he’d been unable to get out of attending with some of his corps-mates on a Paris leave. As for the men, a few wore dinner jackets—though none quite as well as Mr. Stark wore his. There were also a fair number of pinstriped suits. Thomas was reminded of a natty number he’d never see again. Quite wrong for evening, of course, but at least they were in-period. 

Then there were the men dressed in brightly-coloured suits that appeared to have been made for giants. They wore extremely wide trousers, cuffed at the ankle to resemble Turkish trousers. Their jackets draped nearly to the knee, and had ridiculously wide lapels and shoulders. Thomas certainly _hoped_ nothing like that had come into fashion after he’d left the ‘twenties. 

Or any other time, really. 

The increase in the party’s tempo seemed, if anything, to have added to the catering staff’s disinclination to do their jobs. Thomas was kept quite busy circulating through the party areas, breaking up groups of waiters who had stopped to gawk or talk to each other. 

“Timothy!” he snapped. “And—you,” he added, to the girl Timothy was gossiping with. He really should have learned more names. “What are you supposed to be doing?”

“Serving Champagne,” the girl said. “But we ran out.” She and Timothy both held up empty trays as evidence.

“Then _go get more_ ,” Thomas said, between clenched teeth. 

“I think it’s almost time for my break,” said Timothy.

“If it’s _almost_ time for your break, then it isn’t your break, is it?”

With that, Thomas went to check on the situation on the terrace. 

#

“That was awesome,” Tony yelled to Cherie, or Cheryl, or whatever her name was, as the music wound down. 

Breathing hard, the girl he’d been dancing with nodded. She’d been teaching him to Lindy Hop, which Tony had a vague idea might be out of period, but he was in no mood to care. “I think I need a drink, though,” she yelled back.

“Yeah, me too.”

“And I should probably find Trev,” she added as they made their way off the dance floor, as the next number started up.

“Oh, yeah.” Him. Cheryl-Cherie’s date was the one he knew, and he’d clearly pre-gamed pretty heavily before coming to the party, because he’d been slurring his words pretty hard when he introduced them. Hence Tony not quite knowing the girl’s name. 

“He’s probably by the bar, so—”

Tony flagged down a passing cater-waiter, and grabbed two fish bowls off his tray. “Here,” he said, before Cheryl-Cherie could say they ought to go inside and look for Trev, handing her the one that had a lady swimmer bobbing in it.

“Thanks,” she said. “What is this?”

“Swimming pool punch. Careful, it’s got kind of a kick. Let’s see if we can find someplace to sit down.”

He led her over to the east-facing part of the deck, which was behind the band, and had been designed to be somewhat acoustically shielded from the landing pads, so they should be able to talk without yelling.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the first one to have had that idea. Trev was there, along with a knot of other hardcore party-scene types. “Hey, Tone,” said Trev. “We’ve been trying to figure out where you’re hiding the good stuff.” He tapped his nose.

Tony shook his head. “Sorry. I kinda stopped doing that.”

“But you laid some on for the _party_ , didn’t you?” Trev asked, like the idea of a party without blow was just insane. 

Tony just shook his head.

“Dude, what _happened_ to you?”

“I—became a superhero,” Tony answered. “What, an ocean of booze isn’t enough for you?”

“At a _Stark_ party? Hafta say, I’m kind of disappointed.” 

Tony held up his hands. “Whatever, man. See you later, Sher—you’re an awesome dancer.”

He bailed, heading inside. God, why had he invited that dick? 

Probably because he was a lot easier to take when you were high. And he supposed he ought to be glad he had, since Cheryl-Cherie was fun. Yeah. Focus on that. A hundred and ninety-nine other people were having a great time; fuck Trev.

#

The terrace dance floor was…chaos. The early-arriving guests hadn’t done anything that Thomas thought resembled dancing, mostly sticking to swaying back and forth or twitching spasmodically. The later arrivals—“hardcore party people,” as Mr. Stark had described them—apparently preferred to writhe like souls in torment. Some danced in groups, like a pattern dance but with no recognizable pattern. Others seemed to be dancing alone. Those who _were_ in couples rubbed and jerked against each other, in movements reminiscent of…well, of activities not usually carried out amidst a crowd. 

Looking away from the shocking display of carnality, Thomas sought out the cater-waiters assigned to this area. One advantage of the red coats was that they did tend to draw the eye. He routed out two who were lingering behind a large floral arrangement, and another, a woman, who was dancing by herself, thrusting her hips against the tray she was supposed to be serving drinks on. Thomas personally escorted her to the bar and saw to it that she used her tray for its intended purpose.

Re-stocking his own tray with Champagne glasses, he returned to the terrace to circulate among the guests, offering Champagne and keeping a weather eye out for any more cater-waiters shirking their duties. He was tempted into a few moments of shirking himself, though, when he caught sight of Mr. Stark. He was dancing with a young lady—proper dancing, or at least more proper than anything else that was going on. Thomas didn’t recognize the steps, but it was clear that there were some.

Thomas only realized he’d been staring when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He nearly jumped, but covered his surprise by turning to face the guest. 

“Hey, buddy—thought you might want to know, somebody puked over there.”

“Did they,” Thomas muttered, then nodded his thanks to the guest, and went to find a quiet place from which he could ask Mr. Jarvis how to deal with the situation. The procedure, it turned out, involved fetching one of the cleaning robots, and making sure no one interfered with it as it scrubbed away the mess. This proved both more and less difficult than Thomas had anticipated. He had thought it likely that no one would notice the small, disc-shaped robot whirring across the terrace, and that it might be stepped on. Instead, the device’s arrival caused a brief sensation, as guests turned to look at it, nudged their neighbors, and pointed at it. The sight of the robot extruding its two small claws to maneuver itself down a flight of two steps attracted particular notice. Several guests trailed after it, though they—fortunately—lost interest once they saw what it had been summoned to clean up.

But word of its distasteful task did not spread; on the robots way back, Thomas had to dissuade one young woman from picking it up and cuddling it. “Miss, it would be better if you did not handle the robot.”

“But it’s cuuuuuuuuuute,” she protested.

“Perhaps it is, but it’s just been mopping up a puddle of sick, so….”

“Ew,” she said, putting it down hastily, then darted off to shriek to her friends about how she had just touched Tony Stark’s puke-bot.

As he returned the robot to its hatch in the penthouse kitchen wall, Thomas noticed a young man and woman standing close together, the woman’s back to the corner formed by the kitchen work surface. At first he ignored them, not wanting to interrupt a romantic tete-a-tete, but his attention was drawn when the man said “You _bitch_.”

Looking more closely, Thomas recognized Mr. Stark’s dance partner from earlier. “Miss? Is this gentleman bothering you?”

“Um. No,” she said, but her tone was not very convincing.

“She’s my date, buster, so back off,” the man said. “And we were just leaving.” He grabbed the woman’s arm. 

She snatched her arm away. “I’m still having fun,” she said sharply. “Or I was, until you started acting like an asshole.”

“Perhaps you’ve had a bit too much to drink, sir,” Thomas suggested diplomatically.

“Yeah, right,” he snarled. Then, to the woman, he added, “Fine. You know what? You do what you want. I’m bailing.” He stormed out of the kitchen. 

“Good riddance,” Thomas said under his breath, and took out his telephone. “Mr. Jarvis, you might want to make sure the gentleman who just exited the penthouse kitchen encounters no difficulties leaving the building.” After Mr. Jarvis said that he would do so, Thomas put the phone away and said to the young woman, “Are you all right, miss?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Fine. Except Trev was kind of my ride.” Thomas wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it was cleared up when she added, “Not that it’s exactly a good idea to get in his car right now anyway.”

“Mr. Jarvis or I will be happy to summon a taxi for you, whenever you’re ready to leave,” he offered. 

“Thanks,” she said. “I think I’m gonna stay, for a while at least. If that’s OK. He’s the one who was invited.”

“I expect it’s all right,” Thomas said. Plenty of the young women at the party had arrived without escorts. 

“Cool.” She picked up her handbag. “Thanks for—comin’ to my rescue.”

“Certainly, miss.” 

#

After talking to Trev Tony made his way to the library, he found Bruce, Jane Foster, and some others speaking High Geek. 

“You okay, Tony?” Bruce asked. 

“Yeah. I just had kind of an after-school special moment.”

“Huh?”

“Old buddy—actually, old guy I used to hang out with but never really liked—just told me he’s _disappointed_ that I’m not doing cocaine anymore,” Tony explained. “So I came down here to hang out with my new friends who like me for who I am.”

“Good choice,” Bruce said. “We’re just talking about—time travel.”

Not exactly a surprise. SHIELD was still trying to keep a lid on things, but scientists in various disciplines had picked up anomalous readings, with equipment ranging from—in the group in Tony’s library alone—seismographs, weather-tracking equipment, and radio telescopes. Plus the plesiosaur had been seen by hundreds of people—not to mention half a dozen TV cameras—in Florida. China wasn’t even trying to keep the Mongols a secret; they were setting them up in a historical re-creation area under the auspices of one of the major Chinese universities. Add in the fact that aliens attacking Manhattan last year had shifted everyone’s perceptions of what was possible and what wasn’t, and it wasn’t too surprising that some of the finest scientific minds in the world had put two and two together and come up with time travel. 

“We know now that it _is_ possible,” said Garrett Bowman, the radio telescope guy. “It’s happened, so clearly there’s way to do it.”

“But possible doesn’t mean controllable,” Bruce said. Tony could tell they were summarizing the argument so far. “Not even the Asgardians know how they did it.”

“There’s absolutely no pattern to the disturbances,” put in Lauren Cho, a climatologist. “Geographically, they’re all over the place—England, the Caribbean, and China, plus the possible in Ecuador, the Carribbean, and mine in Antarctica.” 

“To even begin to _understand_ how it happened, let alone control it, we’d have to, at a minimum, have data from both ends of an event,” Dr. Foster went on. “The most recent point of origin we have is Tony’s butler from 1921, and they didn’t have _anything_ back then that could measure the kind of outputs we need.”

“They had seismographs,” put in—who else—the seismologist. “But they weren’t sensitive enough to pick up an STD.”

“Now you tell me,” said Jane’s research assistant, who had apparently come as her plus-one. “I spent two weeks squinting over microfilm from 1921. All I found was a couple of newspaper articles about how people saw flashing lights in the sky, and they quoted a ‘noted man of science’ saying it was probably heat lightening.” 

“Not swamp gas?” Garrett asked. They all got a chuckle out of that. “But seriously,” he went on. “This is like Holy Grail stuff. Before these events, all the evidence suggested there’s no such thing as time travel. Now we know there is.”

“Technically,” Tony pointed out, “all we know is that it’s possible to grab stuff out of the past and bring it to the present. Which, yeah, is time travel, but it’s not exactly the kind people make movies about. We don’t know if it’s possible to send anyone back, or to send ourselves forward.”

From there, they spiraled into a discussion of what the events revealed about the nature of time. Naturally, it didn’t go anywhere—they could barely even observe the anomalies, much less experiment on them—but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Tony stuck around until his buzz started to wear off, then wandered back out in search of another drink.

#

Thomas was rearranging the dishes on the downstairs buffet, trying to make it look less picked-over, when a gentleman leaned over and said, “Your costume’s great. Really authentic.”

After briefly considering whether to explain that it wasn’t precisely a _costume_ , Thomas just said, “Thanks.” The man was wearing a pinstriped suit, with a shocking pink necktie and hat-band, that also matched the feather boa draped around his neck. It might have been donned in a moment of drunken hijinks, having been originally worn by a young lady of the man’s acquaintance…but somehow, Thomas rather thought not. “Yours as well. Except—” He indicated with his chin the foot-long cigarette holder that the man held in one languid hand. “—it was mostly ladies who used those.”

“Isn’t that always the way,” the man said, with a dramatic sigh and roll of his eyes. 

He was a bit more of a quean than Thomas usually went for—but at least there wasn’t much chance of making a mistake. “Indeed.” Moistening his lip with his tongue, he said carefully, “Hope you’re having a gay time.” That was the most up-to-date line he knew. Unfortunately, that meant it was over ninety years old—but he had to start _somewhere_. 

“Getting gayer by the minute,” the fellow said. “It’s quite a party.”

“We try,” Thomas said, with a smile. The fellow seemed a bit slow on the uptake. Maybe he was wrong? But really—a pink feather boa? “I’ve been on my feet all night. But I believe I may have a break coming up.” He raised an eyebrow in invitation.

“Do you? Maybe we could—”

Unfortunately, Thomas would never know how he’d been planning to finish that sentence, because Mr. Stark bounded up. “Hey! Kingsley, how you doing?”

“Oh, hi, Tony. Great party. I was just talking to—”

“My butler!” Mr. Stark said. “Thomas. From nineteen-twenty-one.”

“Right,” said the man, who was apparently Kingsley Something, or Something Kingsley. “You and your commitment to the theme.” He turned to Thomas and said, “Listen, cutie, sometime when you’re out of character—”

“Arghh! Stop!” Mr. Stark grabbed Mr. Kingsley’s arm and dragged him away, leaving Thomas confused, a bit shaken, and very glad matters hadn’t progressed any further than they had, if that was how Mr. Stark was going to react to one of his own _friends_ dropping a few hairpins.

#

 

“Tony, what the fuck?” Kingsley was saying as Tony dragged him into the library. 

“Just a minute,” Tony said. “JARVIS—send Cap or somebody to smooth things over with Thomas, ‘kay?”

“Already done, sir.”

“Good. Cool. Thanks.” To Kingsley, he said, “He’s from 1921.”

“Tony,” Kinglsey said with a sigh, “there is such a thing as taking a joke too far. And cock-blocking me with a hot cater-waiter who flirts _in character_ —”

“He isn’t a cater-waiter. He is an honest-to-God butler from 1921.”

Kingsley stepped back. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Tony said. “You’ve heard about the plesiosaur in Florida and the Mongols in China?”

“Sure, but—I assumed the time-traveling butler was just one of your weird jokes.”

“I know. I’d have been keeping my mouth shut about it, if I didn’t figure most people would think that.” He figured Thomas didn’t really need a lot of nosy drunks asking him what it was really like in 1921. Not to mention the media. 

“You’re really not shitting me?” Kingsley asked.

“Really not,” Tony promised. “And I know, he’s absolutely fucking adorable, with his _accent_ and his little _suits_ and his _face_ , but I’m trying not to freak him out.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kingsley said. “You know you could still be sent to prison for homosexual acts back then.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. He wasn’t entirely sure he _had_ known that, but Kingsley’s doctorate was in history, so he’d take his word for it. 

“I bet he remembers the Wilde trials,” Kingsley added musingly.

Great, now Kingsley had a history boner for Thomas, in addition to the regular kind. “If he decides he wants to do interviews, I’ll give him your number,” Tony promised. 

#

“Hey, Thomas, everything all right?” Captain Rogers asked. 

“Hm? Oh, yes,” Thomas said. He’d stayed where he was, still mechanically rearranging platters, after Mr. Stark had dragged off Mr. Kingsley to do God-knows-what. Probably not have him arrested. At least, Thomas hoped not. Nothing had _happened_.

“Jarvis said, um, somebody might have been bothering you?”

The best approach, Thomas decided, was to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything. An oddly-dressed guest had made a few friendly remarks, nothing more. “Hm? No, not in particular. I think a number of the guests may have drunk a bit more than is good for them.”

“A big number, I bet,” Rogers said. 

“Yes. I’m glad Mr. Stark has robots to clean the floors; I wouldn’t like to do it.” He’d had to escort them to several more “incidents” since the one on the terrace. “Still. It all seems to be going well.”

Captain Rogers took himself off not long after, so Thomas supposed he was in the clear. He wondered, briefly, if perhaps he ought to warn Timothy the cater-waiter to be discreet, despite the hedonistic nature of the party. But he wasn’t sure how to find him—or what to say if he did—and at any rate, the fellow was a grown man and had gotten this far without getting himself into serious trouble. 

He did keep an eye out for Kingsley, and was relieved to spot him, an hour or so later, getting a drink at the penthouse bar. There must not have been _too_ much trouble, then. Still, Thomas made a point to keep his distance.

There were plenty of other matters to occupy himself with, anyway. The guests only grew rowdier as the party wore on; Thomas had to summon the security men once to break up a fistfight, and again, shortly after the fireworks display, to dissuade a group of guests from continuing to drop Champagne glasses off the terrace. No sooner was he finished with that then a waiter came up to him and said, “There’s some girl passed out on the floor in one of the bathrooms. There are guys, like, stepping over her to piss in there.”

“Splendid,” Thomas said. 

He found the young woman as described, and firmly directed the waiting guests to use the facilities elsewhere. “Mr. Jarvis, do you have any recommendations?” Obviously, they couldn’t leave her where she was, but apart from that, Thomas was at a loss.

“Her vital signs indicate no serious distress,” Mr. Jarvis said, whatever that meant. “See if you can wake her.”

“What do you want me to do—slap her?” It’s what he would have done if she’d been a drunk bloke, but it didn’t seem wise.

“Try putting a cool compress on her face.”

Thomas wet a hand towel at the sink and pressed it to her forehead, crouching awkwardly to avoid putting his hands or knees on the floor, which was none too clean. She roused slightly, twitching, and eventually cracked open her bleary eyes and said, “Whu?”

“I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink, miss,” Thomas said. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Whu?”

“Your name.”

“Stacy. Whuddaryou…oh, gross. I am soooooooooo wasted.”

“Yes, I believe you are. Did you come here with someone who can take you home?”

“Huh? Jus, uh, Mike an’ them, but--” Suddenly, she lurched into motion and scrambled for the toilet, where she retched over it. Thomas couldn’t help but notice that the vomit was mostly blue.

She was still vomiting when Dr. Banner turned up. “Hey. Jarvis said we had a…problem.”

“We do, sir,” Thomas said, glad he was no longer dealing with said problem entirely on his own. 

Unfortunately, Dr. Banner had no more success than Thomas had at getting the young woman to identify anyone who could be brought to her aid. Finally he said, “All right, let’s move her to one of the bedrooms, and I’ll keep an eye on her. “

With one of them on either side, they managed to get the girl more or less upright, and escorted her down the corridor to one of the guest bedrooms. Once they had deposited her on the bed, Dr. Banner ducked into the en-suite bathroom and returned with the wastepaper basket, which he placed near to hand. “Could you get, um, some bottled water, and maybe black coffee?”

“Certainly. Shall I get one of the waitresses as well?”

“What for?”

“Er…chaperone?” Thomas asked. 

“Not really necessary,” said Dr. Banner. “I think I can be trusted.”

“Of course, sir. I just--” There was no good way to finish that sentence, so he ducked out and went to fetch the requested water and coffee, instead. 

She wound up not being the last patient for Dr. Banner’s makeshift infirmary. By the time the party began to wind down, at around 4 AM, there were drunk girls draped all over the room—some delivered there by Thomas, others by Captain Rogers, and a few more by escorts or friends who seemed only too glad to divest themselves of responsibility for their companions—and an annex had been set up in the next room for men who had been similarly afflicted. 

Thomas was in the penthouse kitchen, making mugs of coffee and putting them on a tray, when a woman approached him. “Hi,” she said. “You’re the butler, right?”

She was wearing one of the special badges that Mr. Stark had provided for the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Mr. Stark had warned him that they might approach him for details about the household’s private lives, and had supplied him with a few innocuous ones to disclose if he thought it best. “Under-butler,” he said. “Mr. Jarvis is the butler.”

“Right. Of course. Do you know what Jarvis is?”

That wasn’t a secret, surely—Thomas had seen it mentioned in a few of the articles about Mr. Stark that he’d read. “He’s an artificial intelligence created by Mr. Stark,” he answered. 

That answer was apparently not of much interest; the woman shrugged it off and asked, “How did you come to be Tony Stark’s under-butler?”

“The usual way,” Thomas said suspiciously. “He offered me the place and I accepted.”

“After you came forward in time from 1921.”

Somehow, he’d had the impression that the fact that he had traveled in time was not supposed to be common knowledge. But Mr. Stark had said as much to that Kingsley fellow, and one or two of the scientific ladies and gentlemen had asked questions about it, as well. “Of course, yes. After that.”

“What’s the most surprising thing about life in the 21st century?”

“I beg your pardon?” It seemed like an unduly personal question. 

“The most surprising thing,” she repeated. “Airplanes, women in the workforce, man walking on the moon…?”

“There have always been women in the workforce,” Thomas pointed out. “And aeroplanes were around the beginning of the century.” He remembered reading about the Wright Brothers’ flight in a newspaper. He didn’t remember exactly when, but he’d still been in school. 

“All right, maybe those were bad examples,” the woman said. “But you’re a hundred years in the future, living in a skyscraper that’s run by a computer program. Surely there’s something surprising.”

“Finding out that the Prince of Wales got divorced was a bit of shock,” Thomas said. Perhaps not the _most_ surprising thing, but he saw no reason to be more forthcoming. “If that’s all, I have a bit of work to do.”

#

Tony was on the terrace, saying goodbye to people as the band packed up their instruments, when Pepper came up. “Tony,” she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “I’m heading out.”

“What? Didn’t you just get here?” Tony asked.

“I’ve been here since midnight.”

“I’ve barely seen you,” Tony objected. 

“It was pretty crowded,” she said, sounding like she was agreeing with him, even though she wasn’t.

“Crowd’s thinning out now,” he pointed out. “Why don’t you stick around for the after-party? Watch the sun come up?”

“Because some of us are responsible adults who have to get up Monday morning,” she said. 

“I’m responsible! Didn’t you hear about how there isn’t even any coke at this party?”

“Must have missed that one. Actually, though….” She hesitated. 

“What?”

“Did you _mean_ for the press invitees to know about Thomas being from you-know-when?”

“It’s no big deal,” Tony said. “They’ll think it’s a joke.”

“Um. Cassie Vaughn, from the _Times_ , was talking to Garrett and Kingsley and some of the others about it.”

“Oh, shit,” Tony said. He hadn’t told Kingsley it was a secret, and Garrett was a notorious blabbermouth. “JARVIS? Is Cassandra Vaughn still in the building?”

“She has just collected her things from the coat check, sir,” said JARVIS. 

Shaking her head, Pepper took out her phone. “JARVIS, connect me.” A moment later, she said, “Hi, Cassie! Pepper Potts. I was just talking to Jane—Dr. Foster—and she mentioned some of the scientist guys might have been trying to convince you that this time-traveling butler thing is true.” She laughed; to Tony, it sounded stagey, but hopefully Cassie Vaughn wasn’t as familiar with Pepper’s laughs as he was. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t fall for it. I’d hate for you to run with it in your story and end up….” She laughed again. “Right! That’s what I thought; us girls have to stick together. Uh-huh. Bye.” When the call ended, she closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “Okay. You owe me.”

“How is tonight different from all other nights?” Tony asked. 

“Now I really do have to go,” she said, kissing him again. “Goodnight, Tony.”

“Night, Pep,” Tony said, watching her go.

#

As the catering staff began packing up their equipment, Thomas circulated among the last few guests, carrying a tray full of coffee cups and asking people, a bit pointedly, if they wanted to have one before they left. As he made a last sweep of the terrace, he encountered Mr. Stark, who was sitting at one of the tables, his feet up on the chair next to him, and his black tie untied. _Like Sinatra_ , Thomas thought. He still didn’t know who Sinatra was, or why Mr. Stark wanted to look like him. 

“Coffee, sir?” Thomas asked him, offering the tray.

“Thanks,” Mr. Stark said, taking a cup. “Went pretty well, I think.”

“The guests seemed to enjoy themselves, sir,” Thomas agreed. “I hope you did as well?”

“I did.” He slurped loudly from the coffee cup, drinking half of it. “I’m kinda wiped out, though. Don’t wanna move. But I’m also too old to sleep in a chair on a balcony. Learned that one the hard way.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said, because some response seemed to be expected.

Mr. Stark finished the coffee, then put the coffee cup back on Thomas’s tray. It took him two tries. “Whoa.” Shaking his head, he got unsteadily to his feet. “C’mon, you can help me with something. This part’s fun.”

Leaving the tray behind, so he’d have both hands free to catch Mr. Stark if he fell over, Thomas followed him inside and to his bedroom. Before Thomas could quite begin to wonder if things were going to take a very unexpected turn, Mr. Stark tapped on a panel in the wall and said, “Jarvis? Open up.”

For a second, Thomas wondered if this was, perhaps, where Mr. Jarvis lived—surely he had some sort of physical component, as the robots did? But the panel proved to hide a rather ordinary wall-safe, crammed full of red-and-gold coloured cardboard boxes, each about the size of a hardcover book. 

“How many catering guys are there?” Mr. Stark asked.

“Ah, twenty-two, sir, counting the bartenders.”

“You’re gonna have to check my math; I might be too drunk to count that high,” Mr. Stark said, and began taking boxes out of the safe and piling them into Thomas’s arms. He did not, in fact, have any noticeable difficulty with the counting. Tucking the last two boxes under his own arm, he took out a stack of banknotes, wrapped in a paper band from the bank. “C’mon. Let’s go make it rain.”

Slightly mystified, Thomas followed Mr. Stark back to the penthouse sitting room, where he first approached the bartender. “Thanks for helping out tonight, buddy,” Mr. Stark said, and handed over two banknotes, followed by one of the boxes. “That’s the new one—drops next week. Thanks again.”

Now Thomas understood—they were distributing tips. And the boxes, once the pile in his arms diminished to the point that he could see them properly, proved to contain the _Starkphone Mk. V, in hot-rod red_. Thomas wasn’t sure how pleased he would have been if some wealthy industrialist invited to visit Downton Abbey had chosen to hand out things his company made in place of the usual cash, but the bartenders, waiters, and waitresses certainly seemed happy enough. Thomas had to instruct several of them to finish their work before they began playing with their new toys. 

After three or four repetitions, Mr. Stark added that to the spiel. “Thanks for helping out tonight, buddy. That’s the new one—drops next week. Do me a favor and finish up here before you play with it.”

Each time Mr. Stark handed over one of the phones, he reached back to Thomas for another one, until finally there were none left. “Oh,” Mr. Stark said, blinking at him owlishly. “Is that it?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Awesome. And _yoooooooou_ already have the new Starkphone, so, here.” He handed Thomas what was left of the bundle of banknotes. 

They were hundred-dollar notes, and more of them than Thomas could count at a glance. “Sir?”

“Yeah, keep those,” Mr. Stark said, waving his hand negligently. 

Thomas decided not to argue, and tucked them into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Very good, sir.”


	3. Downton

Steve was, unsurprisingly, the first one up the day after the party. But he wasn’t the first by nearly as much as he would have thought—when he came out of the gym after his workout, Thomas was standing over the sofa with a trash bag, pulling napkins and half-eaten canapés out of the spaces between the cushions. 

Boy, 21st-century people sure could be pigs sometimes. “Morning,” Steve said. 

Thomas straightened up. “Good morning, Captain Rogers. What would you like for breakfast?”

“Um, nothing, thanks,” Steve said. He’d mostly given up on trying to talk Thomas out of waiting on him, but Thomas looked beat—Steve knew for a fact he’d still been up at six in the morning, and it was barely eleven now. “I’ll just grab some coffee and then give you a hand.”

“That isn’t necessary, sir.” 

Steve didn’t argue with him; he just drank his coffee, then got his own bag and started picking up trash. “Jarvis, can we get some news on the TV?”

“Certainly, Captain Rogers. Any particular network?”

“Surprise me,” Steve answered. 

Jarvis brought up one of the local stations, and Steve listened with half his attention as the newscasters presented stories on Syria, the upcoming World Series, and the weather. Then the female newscaster said, “Next up, just across the border in New Jersey, some couples and state workers are preparing for a big day, as the state begins issuing same-sex marriage licenses on Monday morning.”

The picture changed to show two gals, their arms around each other’s shoulders. “We’ve been waiting for years. A lot of our friends have gone up to Canada, over to Vermont, but we’re Jersey girls. We wanted to get married at home.”

“And tomorrow’s the big day,” the newscaster said. “But some state workers feel that things are moving too fast.”

Now the screen showed another woman, saying, “It’s fine with me, personally. I mean, I don’t care what they want to do. But the state hasn’t given us no instructions, no new forms, no nothing—just, Monday morning we gotta start giving out the licenses.”

“While other residents believe this is a case of judicial overreaching,” the newscaster went on.

Now the screen was filled with a man’s face, saying, “This, this same-sex business, it should have been put to a vote. The people of New Jersey should have the right to say whether we want that going on in our state or not.”

Steve became aware that Thomas was watching the screen with an intent expression. “What’s that about, then?” he asked.

“Um…same sex marriage? It’s…pretty much what it sounds like,” Steve said.

“It can’t be what it sounds like,” Thomas objected. 

“Yeah. Um, it is. Two gals, or two guys, can get married now.”

“But—to _each other_?”

“Yeah,” Steve said again. “It’s, uh, it’s a civil rights issue. Like black folks being able to have the same jobs and go to the same schools as white. The, uh, the homosexual folks want the same rights as everybody else. Stands to reason, really, that they would.”

“Sure, but….” Thomas sat down, on the sofa, without being expressly invited to. Steve knew he had to be pretty shocked, to do that.

“It’s…fine, though,” Steve said. “I mean, it isn’t like it’s… _mandatory_ or anything. They’re a very small part of the population. If a, uh, a guy makes a pass at you, you just say sorry, no thanks, not interested.”

“Oh, is that what you do,” Thomas said, a faint note of hysteria in his voice. He dropped his head into his hands and made a noise, sort of halfway between laughing and choking. 

“Thomas,” Steve said carefully, “you okay?”

Thomas shook his head. “A few months ago, I came _that_ close--” He held his forefinger and thumb a fraction of an inch apart “—to going to _prison_ for making a _pass_ at a bloke who _wasn’t interested_.”

“Oh,” Steve said faintly. “So you’re…oh.” Boy, was Tony ever going to gloat about that one. “Well, that’s great. I mean, not the…almost getting arrested. But the….” Frantically, Steve tried to remember if any of his “sensitivity training” had covered what you were supposed to say when someone came out of the closet. Fortunately, Thomas didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what he was saying; he was still staring at the television—even though it had moved on to the weather report—and occasionally making the laughing-choking noise again. But Steve felt like he ought to say _something_ that was a complete sentence. “I support your….” Oh, shit, he couldn’t remember what you were supposed to call it. All he could think of was _lifestyle choice_ , and that was the one you _weren’t_ supposed to say. “The thing you just said. I am supportive of it.”

Thomas finally seemed to notice that Steve was talking. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was just, uh, trying to say something supportive,” Steve explained. “But I wasn’t doing a very good job.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. After looking around himself in confusion for a moment, he shook his head and stood up, saying, “Well. I don’t suppose it’s any reason to be sitting down on the job, is it,” and went back to picking up trash.

#

Thomas carried on with his work mechanically, gathering rubbish and collecting glasses and plates that the catering staff had left behind, but his thoughts were in turmoil. If the newspaperwoman had asked him today, Thomas would certainly have had a different answer as to what was the most surprising thing about the 21st century. Not that he would have _said_ it, out loud, but….

Well, it was one thing to think, privately, that the way he was wasn’t foul. It was another thing entirely to hear that the state of New Jersey agreed with him. And the two women on the television—the two _women of a Sapphic sort_ , who were going to get _married, tomorrow_ , to _each other_ —had said something about Canada and Vermont, as well. 

Now he knew why Timothy the waiter wasn’t afraid to make his inclinations known. It was a good thing Thomas hadn’t tried to _warn_ him; what a fool he would have looked.

After finishing the most essential cleanup tasks, Thomas retreated back to his apartment, where he consulted the _Society_ book from his SHIELD orientation materials. There, in the middle of a chapter labeled “The Sexual Revolution,” were several pages about what was termed the “Gay Rights Movement.” There, he read not only had sodomy been decriminalized in the US and “much of Europe,” as the book put it, but that it was now against the law to sack someone from a job for being that sort, and they had fought for the rights to marry, to adopt _children_ , and—for reasons Thomas found hard to fathom—to “serve openly in the military.” The book also contained the same advice Captain Rogers had given him, concerning saying that one was sorry, but not interested. 

When Thomas had finished reading the pages, Mr. Jarvis said, “Mr. Barrow, I don’t wish to be intrusive, but I wonder if there are any questions I can answer for you.”

“Um…I’m not even sure where to start,” he admitted. “I can’t even really believe it’s true. I mean—it’s really all right now?”

“Homosexual conduct has been legalized throughout the United States and Western Europe—including Great Britain—but it remains a contentious subject,” Mr. Jarvis clarified. “There is a vocal minority—in the United States, a _very_ vocal minority—who argue that growing acceptance of homosexuality is a sign of moral decay.”

“That…makes the whole thing seem a lot more believable, actually,” Thomas said. 

“Then it may also cheer you to know that the response to an unwanted advance that was outlined by Captain Rogers represents an ideal, not necessarily a reality. A violent reaction is statistically rare, but not unheard of, and an unpleasant verbal altercation is…less rare. A certain degree of caution is advisable when seeking romantic companionship.”

Useful to know, Thomas supposed, as mind-boggling as it was to have the butler giving him advice about “seeking romantic companionship.” “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. 

#

Rolling out of bed sometime on Sunday afternoon, Tony stumbled to the penthouse kitchen in search of coffee. But when he reached into the wire basket next to the machine, where his coffee pods usually were, his hand met only….wires. He stared down at it in disbelief for a moment. “JARVIS? Where’s my coffee?”

“I’m afraid the supply in your kitchen was all served to the guests last night,” JARVIS said. “We are expecting a delivery shortly.”

_Shortly_ wasn’t good enough. “Tony…smash….” He said warningly.

“There is, however, some left in the common area kitchen, and the supply in the labs is untouched,” JARVIS added quickly.

Right. Okay. Common area was closer. He lurched over to the elevator and rode down one floor. He was making a bee-line for the kitchen when suddenly, a mountain of Steve loomed before him. “Good, you’re finally up,” he said. “I gotta tell you--”

“Coffee,” Tony interrupted. He zagged left, but Steve must have zigged right, because he was still in Tony’s way.

“Tony, this is _important_. Thomas--”

“Is about to be eaten by a T-rex?” Tony asked. “’cause if not, it can--”

“He’s gay,” Steve said.

_That_ cut through the hangover pretty well. “What? How do you know? Did he make a pass at you? Tell me he made a pass at you. Tell me there’s _video_.”

“No,” Steve said. “The news was on, and they did a story on same sex marriage in Jersey. He…had some questions.”

That wasn’t quite as awesome was what Tony had been picturing. But still. “JARVIS! Order a cake; we’re having a coming out party!”

“Yes, sir,” said JARVIS. “Would you like rainbow sprinkles?”

“Why not?” Tony said. “Something from the erotic bakery is probably a little much for his first day out.” With that, he _finally_ got past Steve and continued toward the coffee maker. 

Steve followed him. “I’m not sure he wants a big fuss.”

“It’s just cake,” Tony pointed out as he got the machine started. “I wasn’t gonna make him grand marshal of the Pride Parade.” Not right now, anyway. Maybe later. 

“He was pretty freaked out,” Steve insisted. “He said he was almost sent to prison, a few months ago, for…you know, that.”

The coffee cup was half full; Tony quickly swapped it out for another one, added a little cold water from the tap, and slugged it down. As the caffeine hit his system, his mind cleared further. “Wait.” 

“What?”

“Are you even supposed to be telling me this?”

“Uh….”

“Stevie-baby,” Tony said kindly. “When someone comes out to you, you aren’t supposed to go around blabbing to everyone you know. Some people like to keep that kind of thing private. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Oops,” said Steve. 

“JARVIS, cancel the cake. No, actually, just cancel the sprinkles. I’m kind of hungry for cake now. Where _is_ Thomas now?”

“Mr. Barrow is in his room, having a rest,” JARVIS reported. 

“Good,” Steve said. “He was out here cleaning up, earlier, but he looked pretty bushed.”

“Okay, guess I’ll talk to him later,” Tony said. He wasn’t sure what he’d _say. Steve says you’re gay, and that’s fab because I just happen never to have mentioned that I like dudes, too, and you’re hot, so hey, how about it?_ was probably not ideal, for multiple reasons.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Just a tip—you might want to put on some pants first.”

Tony looked down at himself, and noticed for the first time that he was in just his underwear. 

“Seeing as you _were_ the one who made this a _pants mandatory zone_ ,” Steve added.

#

Thomas got up from his mid-day rest feeling, if anything, groggier than when he’d lain down—and with a crushing sense of embarrassment. Despite…what he’d learned…it couldn’t be appropriate to have said…what he’d said…to Captain Rogers. He wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been so tired, and so surprised. 

After splashing some cold water on his face and neatening himself up a bit, Thomas went back out into the common areas to see what there was to do. Glancing around the sitting room, he took note of the furniture that was still out of place, and the empty shelves and bar where things had been shuffled into the guest bedrooms for safekeeping. Putting all of that back where it belonged was the next thing, he supposed. 

Then he looked over to the dining area and saw Mr. Stark, a large bakery box open in front of him, eating a slab of cake with his fingers. “Hi, Thomas,” he said. “Want some cake?”

“Ah—no, sir. Would you like a _fork_?”

“Couldn’t find one.”

Thomas hurried over to the kitchen, where he found the forks in their usual drawer. Selecting one, he offered it to Mr. Stark, handle first. 

Mr. Stark said, “Thanks,” and took it, but set it aside and continued eating with his hands. 

Well, he’d done all he could, hadn’t he? 

“By the way,” Mr. Stark said. “Steve told me, uh, what you told him. The gay thing.”

Did he. Thomas would have preferred it if he hadn’t—but if what he’d read in the SHIELD manual and in some other articles Mr. Jarvis had found for him was true, Mr. Stark wasn’t really _allowed_ to sack him, even if he didn’t like it. “Yes, sir. I apologize; I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No,” Mr. Stark said. “I mean, it’s fine. We’re cool.”

Thomas wasn’t entirely sure what “we’re cool” meant, in this context—the word seemed to have a baffling variety of meanings, in the 21st century—but the meanings seemed to be uniformly positive, and Mr. Stark didn’t seem angry, so he was cautiously optimistic. “That’s very kind, sir. Thank you.”

“Actually,” Mr. Stark went on, “I’ve kind of been keeping it under wraps—Steve thought it would freak you out—but I’m by myself.”

Thomas glanced around. It was obvious that Mr. Stark was by himself—except for Thomas—but he wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.

“Okay,” Mr. Stark said. “Can I get some kind of a reaction? I mean, I love the stoic thing you have going on, but I don’t know whether I need to give you the talk about how it’s not a sin, a crime, or a disease, or if we can skip straight to taking you to the clubs and showing you how to pick up guys. Or something in between. Although I’m not sure what _is_ in between.” 

“I think I may have missed something, sir,” Thomas admitted. The part about it not being a sin, a crime, or a disease had been covered by the SHIELD manual, but—well, Mr. Stark could not possibly be suggesting what it sounded like he was suggesting.

“No problem,” Mr. Stark said cheerfully. He’d finished his cake and was now licking the icing off his fingers. “We’ll back up. Um, you get that this conversation is about you being a—I don’t know what word you’d be familiar with. Homosexual?”

“Yes, sir, I understood that much. I’m confused about the part where it almost sounded like…you were saying that you were too?”

“No, like I said, by--” Understanding dawned. “Bi¬ _sexual_. As in, the media likes to show me draped in half-naked chicks, but I like half-naked dudes, too.”

“Oh.” Now he understood—some of the articles Mr. Jarvis had shown him had mentioned the term, along with some others, but he hadn’t been sure what it meant, and there had been other things on his mind. 

“We’re on the same page now?”

“I think so,” Thomas said. “What does the other one mean?”

“The other what?”

“Oh. The—in some things I was reading, they talked about, ah….” Could he actually say the words? No, he could not. “There was a sort of list.”

“Oh, uh, the—LGBT.”

Thomas nodded gratefully. “I know the first two, and we’ve covered the third.”

“Transgender,” Mr. Stark said. “That’s…have you heard of, uh, guys who like to dress up as women?”

“Oh—queans, yes.” 

“Right. Transgender is them, and people who want to be the other sex, and there’s some other stuff mixed in there too.”

“How can you _be_ the other sex?” Thomas objected.

“There’s an operation. I suggest not looking up the details. Unless, I mean, if that’s something you’re interested in.”

“Uh, no,” Thomas said. He’d always found even the idea of dressing as a woman strange and repellent. 

“Okay. Just checking.” Mr. Stark looked at him for a moment. “So, um…I’m guessing you did get that Kingsley was hitting on you, at the party.”

“I was very nearly sure he was, yes,” Thomas agreed. “I had the impression you weren’t…pleased about it.”

Mr. Stark winced exaggeratedly. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I thought he might be freaking you out. I mean, Steve’s been here a couple of years now, and he still gets kind of weirded out when guys hit on him. Plus there’s the whole, you know, sexual harassment thing.”

No, he did not know—though he supposed it could be what it sounded like. “Sir?”

“You aren’t really supposed to make unwanted advances to somebody while they’re at work. Because they can’t necessarily, you know, tell you to fuck off,” Mr. Stark explained. 

Ah, so it _was_ what it sounded like. At Downton, that sort of problem had mainly been handled by making sure the maids weren’t alone with men, whether guests or servants. Thomas had, of course, not been thus protected, but he’d generally managed to handle himself. “I see.” 

“Not that Kingsley would give you a hard time if you told him to back off,” Mr. Stark added. “He’s a good guy. Jarvis has his number, if you wanna, you know, follow up on that. He seemed pretty into you.”

Thomas struggled to put some other interpretation on what Mr. Stark had just said, but was forced, eventually, to conclude that Mr. Stark was, indeed, suggesting that Thomas have an _assignation_ with one of his friends. 

“Gotta warn you, though, he’s also gonna want to interview you about being a real life 1920’s homosexual. He’s—that’s what he does, he’s a historian. So if you’re up for either of those things, you could give him a call.”

“I’ll—keep that in mind, sir.”

“You could do worse. I mean—I don’t really know what he’s after. Maybe just something casual. You’d have to ask him. But, um, speaking of casual, there’s something else I probably better warn you about.”

In what was probably the most embarrassing conversation of Thomas’s life, Mr. Stark went on to tell him about a new kind of VD that was apparently quite deadly. “It’s not just—you can get it from any kind of sex. But it started out in the gay community.” Men of his sort, Thomas learned, typically used rubber contraceptives to protect themselves from it. Much of the embarrassment of the conversation came from Mr. Stark’s efforts to make sure that Thomas knew what these were. “There should be a huge box of them in the bathroom on this floor.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen them.”

“Great. Awesome. Okay then. And here I thought only having robots would get me out of ever having to give the safe sex talk to anyone….”

#

“Hey, Kingsley,” Tony said, putting his feet up on the workbench. He’d thought long and hard—innuendo definitely intended—about whether to make this call. Encouraging Thomas to get in touch with Kingsley almost had to be noble enough, didn’t it? Especially since he hadn’t perved on him once during their talk?

But wanting the people he liked to be happy was, quite possibly, the only virtue Tony Stark possessed, so it seemed like a bad idea to skimp on it. 

Plus, he was only going to be able to hold out so long before he went ahead and tried to get Thomas into the sack with him. He wanted to be able to tell Captain Sad-face that he’d done the honorable thing first. 

“Hi, Tony. What’s up?”

“It turns out my actual butler from 1921 is an actual gay butler from 1921,” Tony said.

“Yes?” Kingsley said. The _and?_ Was implied. 

“I just thought you might want to know, since you seemed kinda into him.”

“I already knew.” Kingsley sounded puzzled. “You mean you didn’t?”

“How did you know?”

“The historically accurate pickup line was a hint,” Kingsley answered.

“There are 20’s gay pickup lines?”

Kingsley sighed dramatically. “You never read my book, did you.”

“I might’ve, if you’d said it had pickup lines in it! No offense, but it looked like kind of a snooze.” The book was a history of gay life in the 20th century. Maybe he should give it to Thomas, if he could find his copy. 

“Goodness, I can’t imagine why I’d be offended by that,” Kingsley said dryly. 

“So what was it?”

“What was what?”

“The pickup line,” Tony clarified.

“He asked if I was having a ‘gay time.’”

Tony was confused. “Didn’t that just mean ‘happy,’ back in the day?”

“It began to acquire its modern meaning in the late teens and early twenties,” Kingsley explained. “As you’d know, if you had read my book. Since the meaning was not widely known, asking about a gay time was a way of identifying a fellow homosexual while maintaining plausible deniability.”

“You learn something new every day.” Well, for Tony it was more like he _invented_ something new every day. 

“You realize, his knowing that line means that he must have been very involved with the gay culture of the time,” Kingsley went on. “I can’t believe what an amazing opportunity this is. Nearly all of the firsthand accounts we have of Edwardian gay life are from upper and middle-class subjects. Almost the only window we have into working- class gays is police records. There’s so much we don’t know.”

Tony considered whether there was a polite way to ask if Kingsley had, like, a history bro he could be saying all this stuff to, but there didn’t seem to be, so he put Kingsley on speaker and said, “Uh-huh,” or “Interesting,” every time the other man stopped talking, and kept himself busy tinkering with his left boot repulsor, as Kinglsey speculated about everything from Thomas’s love life to how he dressed to his reading habits. 

“I wonder if the people he worked for knew his orientation. I’ve seen several references to certain late-Victorian and Edwardian ladies choosing gay footmen because they were unlikely to impregnate the maids…or run off with the daughters of the house. But those could be apocryphal. Tony, you have to get me an interview with him.”

“I don’t know if he’s gonna want to talk about it,” Tony said. “He seems like kind of a private guy. And he told Steve he almost went to prison over it. It might be something he doesn’t love talking about.” Tony had a few of those. 

“Oh my God,” Kingsley said. “The poor thing. But— _almost_ how? Did he stand trial? Did he—”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say—or if he told Steve, Steve didn’t tell me. _Anyway_ ,” he said, since it was pretty obvious Kinglsey wasn’t planning to draw this conversation to a close any time soon, “I’ll let him know you want to talk to him. Gotta go. Robot emergency,” he lied.

#

Later that evening, Thomas was re-stocking the bar with the “good liquor,” as Mr. Stark put it, when Mr. Barton came in. “What are you doing?” He asked. He sounded a little angry—but Mr. Barton often did.

“Still a few things to put back in order from the party, sir,” Thomas said.

“Thought you were supposed to have the week off.”

“Oh ,yes.” That had slipped Thomas’s mind, actually. “I thought I’d begin that after I’ve gotten everything back to normal.”

“Suit yourself, I guess,” Mr. Barton said. “But you know, it’s not like we’re all going to drown in our own filth or anything. Not even Tony’s completely helpless.”

“I didn’t intend to imply any criticism of your standards of cleanliness, sir,” Thomas said stiffly. He’d often had the impression that Mr. Barton didn’t like him very much, and this was one of those times.

“Yeah. Okay, whatever.” Mr. Barton turned around and left, apparently choosing to abandon whatever had brought him into the room in the first place.

Once he’d gone, Mr. Jarvis said, “Mr. Barton sometimes expresses himself poorly.”

“ _Does_ he,” Thomas muttered.

“But he is correct that you are meant to be on holiday, and that, while your efforts are appreciated, the Tower will not crumble in your absence.”

Still arranging bottles on the bar, Thomas said, “I’m not exactly sure where I would go. Only thing in America I ever thought about wanting to see was New York—and now I’ve seen it.”

“You need not stay in America. Your SHIELD passport will admit you to any country that is a signatory to the World Security Council,” Mr. Jarvis pointed out. “And if you wanted to visit—for instance—England, the Stark Industries jet could have you there in a matter of hours.”

Thomas had forgotten about that a bit, too—if he’d thought about it, he supposed he’d have remembered, but he was used to thinking of at Atlantic crossing as something that only happened at steamship speeds. “I could do that, I suppose.” He had to remind himself that if he did go back, it wouldn’t be the England he knew. “Except…it might be time to find out. What happened to everybody.” Once he knew that, he thought, it would be real to him, how much time had passed.

“Of course. If you would like to give me the names, I’ll get started. It may take some time, as much of the data won’t be readily available, but I should have some results in the morning.”

“Um.” Thomas almost changed his mind, then took a deep breath. “All right. I suppose—start with Jimmy—James Kent.” 

He gave the names of his few surviving relatives, friends, his colleagues at Downton. Mr. Jarvis asked for other information, too, like birth dates. Thomas didn’t always know them, but in most cases, was able to dredge up a month and a guess at the year. Where they had lived when he last knew them, he usually knew, and occupations. Sometimes where they had been born. 

“And—Sybil Branson. I know the birth date, for her.” It was the day before the death date on Lady Sybil’s grave, after all. Once he’d given Mr. Jarvis the details, he added, “And I suppose the rest of the family, too.” He gave those names as well. “They might be a bit easier to find, being noteworthy people. And I wouldn’t mind knowing about the house itself, if there’s still an Earl of Grantham, that sort of thing.” 

“That,” said Mr. Jarvis, “I can answer quite easily. The current Earl of Grantham is Roger Crawley; he appears to be the son of the George Crawley you named. He resides at—ah. Downton Place. Downton _Abbey_ is officially owned by a corporate body known as Downton Heritage Limited; their website indicates that the directors and primary stockholders of the company are all descendants of the Crawley family.”

Not so bad, Thomas supposed. It sounded a bit like it might be a dodge for evading death duties.

“The property is currently run as a resort hotel,” Mr. Jarvis added.

“An _hotel_?” Carson must be livid, Thomas thought—until he remembered that Carson must have been dead for decades. 

“Yes,” said Mr. Jarvis. “Very few stately homes on that scale remained in use as private residences much beyond the Second World War. Those that do remain in the hands of their ancestral families have, for the most part, been at least partially converted to commercial uses, such as museums, historic sites, and—hotels.”

“Oh.” He supposed that made sense—a lot of houses like Downton hadn’t survived his war, let alone a second one. “So I suppose they’re…some of the lucky ones. Or clever ones.”

“A bit of both, I would think,” Mr. Jarvis said. “Would you like to see a picture?”

“I suppose.”

Mr. Jarvis brought one up on the dining table. Downton looked…really, a great deal like it always had. The road leading up to it was paved, now, and there were electric lines visible, as well as a sign reading, “Downton Resort,” in ornate gold lettering on a green field. 

Mr. Jarvis went on, “It appears that several members of the family live on the estate and are directly involved with the running of the hotel. The co-managers are Violet Crawley, youngest daughter of the current earl, and Kieran Abernathy, son of Sybil Abernathy—nee Branson.”

“What? Little Sybil had had a son?” By some bloke named Abernathy. Thomas hoped he’d been good enough for her.

“Yes,” said Mr. Jarvis. “And—well, this is rather surprising.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Abernathy is still in residence at Downton Abbey.”

It took Thomas a moment to realize what Mr. Jarvis was saying. “She’s still alive? But she must be over ninety.”

“Yes, she is—the website has photographs of her ninety-fifth birthday celebration. Would you like to see them?”

Thomas shook his head in surprise. “Yes—of course. I’d like to see them.”

The first photograph was a portrait, showing a very old woman with thin white hair and lively eyes, smiling into the camera. She looked a bit like her granny, and a bit like her mum. At least, Thomas thought so. 

The next showed Miss Sybil—Thomas couldn’t think of her as Mrs. Abernathy—in a blue gown, dancing in the arms a middle-aged man in black tie. “Is that the son?”

“Yes, the caption indicates that it is Mr. Kieran Abernathy.”

Other photographs showed Miss Sybil giving a speech, opening gifts, and cutting into a cake. In the final picture, Miss Sybil sat in front of the fireplace in the entry hall, stroking the head of a yellow Labrador. 

Thomas had never identified with the house and the family the way that, say, Mr. Carson had. He’d wanted it to survive and thrive so that it would continue to provide him with a livelihood. Beyond that, on a good day, he might have had sort of a vague affection for the place. But now, seeing little Sybil, grown old, in front of a fireplace that he’d walked past hundreds, no, _thousands_ of times…. He couldn’t have said what he felt, except that he was glad. 

#

When Tony woke up, after reminding him of his schedule for the day and telling him the weather and SI stock report, JARVIS said, “There is an item in today’s _New York Times_ that may distress you.”

Coming from JARVIS, that could mean almost anything. “What is it?”

“An article presenting the evidence in support of the rumor that we employ, as under-butler, a time traveler from 1921. Ms. Vaughn stops just short of stating outright that she believes this rumor is true, but other news outlets have been less…circumspect.”

Shit. “What evidence does she have?”

“The article includes a somewhat garbled explanation of weather satellite data from the Yorkshire Spatio-Temporal Incident, as well as quotes from sources including, but not limited to, Kingsley Martin, Jane Foster, Garrett Bowman, and Mr. Barrow himself.”

“She talked to Thomas?”

“Yes. He’s quoted as saying that the most surprising thing about the 21st century is the divorce of Charles and Diana Windsor.”

“ _Seriously_? Oh, Thomas, you sassy little minx. I have got to get him to talk to me more.”

“I thought you’d like that, sir. However, since the article became available on the _Times_ website nearly six hours ago, the matter has attracted considerable attention. As of this moment, eighty-seven—eighty- _nine_ —reporters from various media have contacted the Tower requesting an interview with you or Mr. Barrow.”

“That many?” Tony asked. “Slow news day?”

“Perhaps, sir. And others have gathered outside the Tower hoping for an impromptu interview. All of the major newspapers and networks are running the story. The majority simply re-state the _New York Times_ coverage, but there have also been attempts to debunk the story or to support it with additional evidence. An hour ago, the _Post_ published a photograph of Mr. Barrow; it appears to have been obtained from one of the catering staff.”

“Aw, shit." It was a good thing Thomas was getting some time off—he was going to want to avoid his known haunts for a few days. “How’s Thomas taking it?”

“Calmly, so far. Although—oh dear. I may have made a miscalculation.”

#

“—in 1954, it became a bed-and-breakfast, which it remains today, and farming operations were gradually reduced. Today, agriculture is limited to supplying eggs and vegetables for the establishment, and some orchard fruit. The current owner is Daisy’s grandson.”

“Well, that sounds nice,” Thomas said. As he tidied the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher, Mr. Jarvis had been telling him about the fates of the people he knew. O’Brien had succumbed to an unspecified tropical disease in 1926, a fact that left him considerably less satisfied than he would have thought. Others had had varied fates—the Bateses had eventually produced 4 children, but never left Downton; Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes had retired—together—to a cottage on the estate. Alfred had become a chef, but his rise was cut short by the Second World War; he’d enlisted, despite being in his forties, and died in France. “What about—Jimmy Kent?” He was the only one Thomas hadn’t heard about yet.

“James Kent emigrated to America in 1928. At that point, he becomes difficult to trace. A man of that name and the right approximate age died of complications of alcoholism in a pauper’s hospital in 1935. Another became a piano player in a speakeasy, who became, in the 1950’s, a performer of some small renown in Las Vegas, known as ‘Flash Jim.’ He died of unspecified causes in 1974. Another is listed in the 1940 census as a factory worker with two children, in Pittsburgh, and disappears from the historical record afterward.”

“There’s—no way to tell which one was him?”

“I’m afraid not. I have been able to find a newspaper photograph of ‘Flash Jim,’ but the quality is low. Shall I send it to your phone?”

Thomas had to think for a moment. He hoped that one was Jimmy, and the picture might prove it wasn’t. “Yes, I suppose.”

He took out his phone and looked at the picture, which showed a four-piece band—piano, double bass, drums, and a saxophone. The man at the piano had lightish colored hair and was white, but his face was only a fraction of an inch across, so it was difficult to tell anything more. “Is there –any way you can make it bigger? Just his face?”

Mr. Jarvis did so, but the enlarged picture barely looked like a face at all—just some smudges of ink. “Unfortunately, no higher resolution image is available,” Mr. Jarvis said. “I could attempt to enhance the image, but it would involve substantial guesswork.”

“That’s all right,” Thomas said, putting the phone back in his pocket. “It could be him.” That was going to have to be good enough. “Thank you. If there isn’t anything else urgent right now, I think I’ll pop out for some cigarettes.”

“Of course. You are meant to be on holiday,” Mr. Jarvis reminded him. “However, I would remind you that there is a substantial media presence outside the Tower.”

That had slipped Thomas’s mind—Mr. Jarvis had told him about the newspaper article about him. Apparently he was to be a nine-days’ wonder, but it couldn’t be too difficult to avoid or ignore a few newspapermen. “I think I can manage.”

#

On the video feed, Thomas was engulfed by a swarm of reporters—newspapers, TV, probably a few bloggers in there, too. The feed was silent, but Tony could see them shouting questions, and Thomas looking around frantically for an escape route. 

“I informed him that the reporters were waiting for him, sir, but I believe he may have under-estimated their numbers and their enthusiasm,” JARVIS said. “In hindsight, I should have warned him more strongly.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Tony said, throwing on sweats and shoving his feet into shoes. “Better give them something else to point their cameras at,” he went on, heading for the landing pad doors. “Suit me up.”

#

“Thomas, are you really from 1921?”

“How much is Tony Stark paying you to go along with this hoax?”

“Our viewers want to know—”

“—know about Tony Stark?”

Thomas had no sooner stepped out of the lobby than the ladies and gentlemen of the press were upon him, pointing cameras at him and shoving microphones and other less recognizable devices in his face. He had anticipated having to tell one or two persistent souls that he had no interest in giving an interview at this time, but he hadn’t imagined anything like _this_. All thoughts of cigarettes forgotten, he turned to go back inside, but found that he was entirely encircled by the mob. Thomas would never have admitted it aloud, but it was a bit frightening—he didn’t think any of them intended him any harm, but they were pushing and shoving at each other in an effort to get closer to him, and it seemed entirely possible that one of them would lose his or her balance and topple into him, and they’d both be trampled by the rest of the pack. 

He was trying to decide what to do—punching his way out seemed inadvisable, but without a moment’s peace to think, he was at a loss for a better solution—when the knot loosened, several of the people looking upwards, and directing their cameras that way. Thomas looked up, too, and saw Mr. Stark descending, in his flying suit of armour. 

He was heading straight for Thomas, and as he got closer—and it looked more and more like he wasn’t planning on stopping—the reporters backed up, creating a clearing with Thomas at the center of it. Mr. Stark somersaulted in the air and landed, feet-first, next to him. 

As soon as he had done so, the mob lunged forward again—but they stopped when Mr. Stark held up his hands. They were still shouting questions, but that subsided too, when Mr. Stark flipped up his visor. “Hi,” he said.

A few voices from the crowd called back, “Hi!” One added, “We love you, Tony!”

“Thank you,” Mr. Stark said, in that direction. 

Then the questions started up again. “Tony, is your butler really--”

“—hope to gain through this publicity stunt?”

“—secret from the people of New York—”

“Guys,” Mr. Stark said. “Guys! Shut up.” 

They fell silent.

“Please direct all your questions to the public relations department at Stark Industries. When a public statement is available, they’ll have all the details. We are not answering questions at this time.”

Then Mr. Stark grabbed Thomas’s arm and began to clear a path back to the building, repeating, “No questions,” as he did so.

Oddly, the crowd fell back as they reached the lobby doors, and made no attempt to follow them inside. Thomas found out why when one young woman _did_ dart inside, and Mr. Alvarez blocked her way, saying, “This is private property; if you are not here on legitimate business, you will be charged with trespassing.”

She left quickly. Mr. Stark shook his head, saying, “Bloggers. You all right, Thomas?”

“Ah—yes, sir.” 

To Mr. Alvarez, Mr. Stark said, “Jerome, do you have like an extra guy you can send out the back way to pick up some smokes?”

“Not right away, sir, but I have some additional security coming in,” Mr. Alvarez said. “What brand?”

Mr. Stark looked at Thomas.

“I’ve been getting Camels,” Thomas said. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Mr. Alvarez said. “Might be about an hour, but I’ll send them up.”

“You’re a peach,” Mr. Stark said.

They took the elevator up to the penthouse. On the way, Thomas tried to apologize, feeling that it was not entirely correct for his employer to have to rescue him from his own notoriety, but Mr. Stark shrugged it off.

“De nada. Jarvis realized after you left that you didn’t quite know what you were getting yourself into. I already knew all about how to handle the media by the time I made him.”

Mr. Stark got off the elevator in the middle of this speech, obliging Thomas to follow him. “Yes, sir. I’d never had much to do with the press before. I expected them to be a bit more…restrained.”

“Yeah, not anymore,” Mr. Stark said. He headed for the terrace, where a number of mechanical arms stripped his armour from him. “Twenty-four-hour news cycle, baby. Gotta keep the customers satisfied.”

It was truly astonishing, Thomas thought, how often he understood every word Mr. Stark said, but still had no idea what he was talking about. “I see, sir.”

“Not that I should complain,” Mr. Star added, coming back inside. “The media made me who I am today. No lie, my sixth grade science fair was covered by _Life, Newsweek and Popular Mechanics_.”

“Was it, sir?” Mr. Stark still seemed to be in his pyjamas, so Thomas took a guess. “Coffee, sir?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He leaned against the kitchen counter while Thomas prepared the coffee. “Uh-huh. I made a robot. Early version of Dummy, actually. All the other kids had their parents there; I had Jarvis—original Jarvis—and a half a dozen reporters and photographers.”

Thomas wasn’t entirely sure what a science fair was, but from the context, he supposed it was like an agricultural fair, only children exhibited scientific inventions instead of livestock. “Couldn’t your parents attend, as well as the reporters, sir?”

“Yeah, but my dad was real busy. Running SI and everything. Anyway, the point is, I know how to handle them. The first thing is, you gotta decide what you want to give them. You’ve got good instincts there—like, the royal divorce isn’t _really_ the most surprising thing about the 21st century, is it?”

“No, sir, not precisely.” The coffee was ready; Thomas handed it over.

Mr. Stark nodded. “If you refuse to answer something, they just keep hammering away at it. Say something glib, and they’ll move on. Usually.” 

“I see, sir.”

“Might be a good idea to put together a list of questions—Jarvis can go over the articles and the footage from when you were outside—and figure out your answers in advance,” Mr. Stark went on.

“I’d hoped to just avoid them sir.”

Mr. Stark winced. “You can try, but they usually lay off a little if you give them a statement. Hiding makes it look like you’ve got something to hide.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything one can do to make them lose interest?”

“Not really. They will eventually—maybe not completely, since the Avengers are always newsworthy, and the time travel thing is a human interest angle, but it’ll die down. If you want to keep the furor to a minimum, I’d say, give a prepared statement, maybe answer a couple of questions, then stay out of sight for at least a week. You’ve got that vacation coming to you; take it someplace they won’t think to look for you.”

That gave Thomas an opening to make a request he’d been thinking about. “Speaking of that, I thought I might visit England, sir. Mr. Jarvis said it might be all right for me to take your aeroplane?” Thomas really wasn’t sure about that—he supposed it _might_ be the 21st century equivalent of Lord Grantham sending one of the household’s cars to take a servant to the railway station, but it seemed extravagant.

“Hm? Oh, sure. Jarvis, what’s the availability on the corporate jets?”

“StarkOne is returning the Hernandez family from Disney World as we speak, sir,” Mr. Jarvis said. “Allowing for the flight crew’s mandated period of rest, it will be available tomorrow morning, and is not scheduled for another trip until Friday. StarkTwo is currently available but will be taking Ms. Potts to Tokyo on Wednesday.”

“Great,” Mr. Stark said. To Thomas, he added, “So yeah, pretty much whenever you want. You can get Jarvis to help you with the arrangements—hotel reservations and everything.”

“Thank you, sir. He said he’d be glad to help.” Thomas wondered who the Hernandezes were—friends of Mr. Stark’s, perhaps? Or other employees? 

“Anything in particular you’re going to see? Or just having a look around the old country?”

“Yes, actually—I thought I’d look in on the house where I used to work. It’s an hotel now, but they give tours of the grounds and there’s a little museum that’s open to the public.” He’d found that information on the hotel’s website, with Mr. Jarvis’s help, before he’d gone to bed last night. “I’m sure I can find somewhere nearby to stay—there used to be rooms at the pub in the village.” If the pub wasn’t there, or no longer offered rooms, he could always stay in Ripon or Thirsk. 

“Or you could just stay there,” Mr. Stark suggested. “Even if it says they’re full, it might turn out they have a room if you mention my name.”

Thomas hadn’t even _considered_ that. “I don’t think it’s the sort of place a servant on holiday stays, sir.” Even if it was an hotel. The website had pictured, as one of the guest rooms, the Queen Caroline Room—or, as Thomas knew it, _Lady Mary’s Bedroom_. He couldn’t possibly.

“I’m pretty sure that when Tony Stark’s under-butler goes on holiday, he stays wherever the hell he wants,” Mr. Stark said. “Jarvis, what does the website say about availability?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Mr. Jarvis. “However, their internal systems indicate there are three rooms available in the main house, two in the Dower House, and one holiday cottage.”

“There you go,” said Mr. Stark. “Which do you want?”

Somehow, the idea of staying in the _Dower House_ was even worse. The cottage might be all right—but what if it was the Bateses one? “I’ll have to think about it, sir.”

“Sir,” Mr. Jarvis added, “Mr. Barrow might be more comfortable staying elsewhere.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Mr. Stark, looking deflated. “Memories and shit, right? Yeah. Ignore me. But if you do want to stay there—actually, Jarvis, just put the whole trip on my AmEx, whatever he decides, okay?”

“Of course, sir,” said Mr. Jarvis. 

“That’s very kind, sir,” Thomas said. “I suppose it might be a bit fun to stay there,” he added. Now that he’d had a bit of time to think about it, the idea was growing on him. “I’d be able to see a bit more of the place that way.” Of course, if Mr. Carson was buried in the local churchyard, Thomas might be kept awake by the noise of him spinning in his grave. 

The thought was not exactly a disincentive. “Perhaps I will,” he added. 

“Awesome,” said Mr. Stark.

#

 

After Thomas left, saying he was going to work with JARVIS on a press statement—Tony amused himself thinking about Thomas walking into the place he used to work like he owned the joint. The only downsides, as far as he could see, were that Thomas might not swagger quite enough, and if he did, Tony wouldn’t be there to see it. 

There was a solution for that, of course. Tony had enough swagger for an army. And he did want to get to know Thomas better…preferably under conditions where it wouldn’t be creepy to hit on him. Thomas was funny, smart, drop-dead gorgeous, and presumably knew his way around a dick—just Tony’s type. But, for reasons he’d outlined to Kingsley, Tony couldn’t make a move while Thomas was working, and he seemed to work _all the time_. 

“Hey, JARVIS, let me have a look at the website for that hotel,” Tony said. 

It wasn’t Tony’s usual sort of vacation destination—it seemed to cater towards families and blue-hairs, and had historic charm out the ass. The website talked about carriage rides, “country rambles” and the organic produce served in the restaurant and tea room. There didn’t seem to be a pool, let alone any bikini babes. But hey—variety was the spice of life, wasn’t it? And he was taking—planning to take—his own arm candy. 

And there was a pub, and “wifi in some rooms,” so it wasn’t a complete desert. 

Decided, Tony’s next project was how to pitch the idea to Thomas. Inviting himself along on his butler’s vacation called for a certain amount of tact—not exactly Tony’s long suit. He first considered asking JARVIS to feel him out on the subject, but—terrific as JARVIS was—emotional nuance wasn’t exactly _his_ long suit, either. 

Steve, though—since he and Thomas were such buds, maybe Steve could give him a read on how Thomas felt about Tony, personally. And if the response was positive, he could ask Steve to ask Thomas—

At that point, Tony might as well just ask Steve to pass Thomas a note that said, “Do you like me? YES NO (Circle one!)”

The only thing for it, he realized, was to put on his big-boy pants and ask Thomas himself. Briefly, he considered trying Kingley’s “gay time” line. But he didn’t want to be cheesy about this. And really, it would be better to get Thomas thinking of him as a friend, first. Then he could introduce the idea of a friendly roll in the hay. 

Yeah. That was the way to do it. 

And there was no time like the present, so Tony made his way down to the common area. There, he found Thomas and Steve sitting at the dining table, talking about, Tony gathered, Thomas’s press statement.

“No,” Steve was saying. “If you’re too blunt about asking them to leave you alone, they figure you’re trying to hide something. Try saying something like…hm, ‘Thank you for respecting my privacy as I make this difficult adjustment. If I decide to make any more statements or give interviews, I’ll be in touch.’”

“Not bad,” Tony said. 

Thomas immediately leapt to his feet. Steve sighed. 

“Except I’d say that requests for interviews should be sent through SI’s PR department. They know by now that Avengers don’t give interviews to people who can’t follow directions, so with any luck they’ll figure out that the same goes for Thomas. Should thin out the herd some—we’ll still have bloggers and paparazzi outside, but anyone who thinks they have a shot at an exclusive will clear out.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Thomas. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Steve said. “Thomas, why don’t you sit down?”

Thomas glanced over at Tony, who said, “Yeah, do. I’m not the queen. Last time I checked.”

“Sir,” said Thomas, but he did sit down. 

Tony went to the fridge and got himself some juice—it seemed like he ought to act like he had some other reason for coming down here. “Have you decided about your trip?”

“Yes, sir. I thought I’d go tomorrow, if you’re sure it’s all right.”

“Sounds good. So, I was thinking.”

“Uh-oh,” said Steve.

Tony ignored him. “It’s kind of boring to go on vacation by yourself. And you don’t really know your way around the 21st century yet. There’s a lot of stuff JARVIS can’t arrange from this end—going through customs, ground transportation.”

“He has a point,” Steve said to Thomas. “I could go with you, if you wanted.”

_Damn it, Steve! “Or,”_ Tony said firmly, “I could.”

Thomas looked back and forth between them. Tony had a vivid mental image of a cat watching a ping-pong game. 

“Or Tony could,” Steve said. “If you wanted him to.”

“Not in like, a making you work on your vacation way,” Tony added. “We could hang out. Get to know each other better. You know.” At least, Tony hoped he did. And he kind of hoped Steve didn’t. 

“That might be nice,” Thomas said slowly. 

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Nice. That’s exactly what I thought. I don’t know if I’d be able to get away for the whole week—it would depend on what came up, Avengers stuff and SI stuff. But even if I had to leave early, you could stay, and you’d already be settled, so….”

“That sounds lovely,” Thomas said. “If you’re sure you’d like to.”

“Awesome,” Tony said. “JARVIS? Update the passenger manifest for the jet, book two rooms, and reserve a rental car. You know what I like.”

“Done, sir,” said JARVIS. “What time would you like to leave?”

Tony glanced over at Thomas. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I don’t even know how long it takes.”

“Oh, about—JARVIS?” Tony asked.

“About seven hours, sir, wheels-up to wheels down,” JARVIS said. “And there is a five-hour time difference, so you would arrive approximately twelve hours after you left.”

“I knew it was something like that,” Tony said. “Now, a lot of people like to leave in the evening and get there first thing in the morning. I’m not sure why—you do it that way, and you’re stumbling around exhausted your whole first day.”

Steve spoke up. “I believe people do that to save on hotel expenses.”

“Oh,” Tony said. “Pfft. We don’t have to worry about that. Let’s go in the morning, that way we should get there in time to drive up and have a late dinner—wait. JARVIS, where are we flying into?”

“Sheffield is the closest international airport, sir, at a distance of 52 miles, with a driving time of approximately 1 and one half hours, excluding traffic delays.”

“We’ll be able to do a little better than that on driving time,” Tony told Thomas. “Sound good?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Awesome. Book it, JARVIS.”

#

After Tony had left—saying something about, “Lots to do before our trip!”—Steve turned to Thomas. “I hope you actually wanted him to go with you.”

“I’m—sure it’ll be fun,” Thomas said.

“I hope you know he’s gonna have, um…expectations,” Steve said. He really didn’t want to bring it up, be he felt like he had to. 

Thomas gave him a withering look. “Captain Rogers, I don’t mean to be impertinent. But you’ve mentioned from time to time that your teammates have a tendency to assume that being from their past means that you are dangerously naïve?”

“Oh,” Steve said. He hadn’t thought of it that way. 

“I was personally involved with a _Duke_ before you were ever born. I appreciate your concern, but I think I can manage Mr. Stark’s expectations.”

#

Late that afternoon, Thomas stood in the lobby of the Tower, waiting for the stroke of six-thirty. Mr. Stark had advised making his statement in early evening, to maximize their chances of making a clean getaway the next morning. Stark Industries’ public relations department had, apparently, done quite a good job of notifying the press; the crowd outside had swelled considerably. Outside, Mr. Alvarez and his colleagues had cordoned off the area immediately outside the main doors, and were sternly enforcing the barricades. 

“Okay,” Mr. Stark said. “So, we’re going to do my statement, your statement, questions. We’ll let Rachel—” He nodded to the public relations woman—“decide who to call on for questions. If they’re all shouting at once, just stand there and wait for them to quiet down. Okay?”

They’d been over this before. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Good. Okay.” Mr. Stark looked at his wristwatch. “Showtime.”

They stepped out into a blaze of camera flashes that reminded Thomas, for a second, of shell-fire. There was, as Mr. Stark had predicted, a great deal of shouting, but it quieted as he stepped to the podium. 

“Good evening,” said Mr. Stark. “As many of you have heard, our planet has recently been affected by a few Spatio-Temporal Events, including those that brought a plesiosaur to Florida, and one that transported a group of 13th-century Mongols to China.” Mr. Stark talked for a bit about the cause of the events—the Asgardians’ Einstein-Rosen bridge—and gave assurances that there was no further danger. As he spoke, cameras flashed in a desultory sort of way, and Thomas could see the people at the front of the throng shuffling their feet—all of this had been covered in a SHIELD press release earlier in the day.

“The first recorded Spatio-Temporal Event, which occurred over the north of England in early August, brought forward a man from 1921. The Avengers, in partnership with SHIELD and Stark Industries, have been helping him adjust to his new life in 2013.”

At that, the reporters began shouting questions. Or shouting something, at any rate—it was hard to make out any words. Mr. Stark stood there until they quieted. “His name is Thomas Barrow, and as many of you have also heard, he’s now employed in the Avengers’ residence as a butler, which was his profession before his temporal dislocation. He’ll now make a brief statement, and afterward—if you guys behave yourselves—we’ll take a few questions. Thomas?”

Thomas stepped forward. “Good evening.” The cameras flashed again, but there was very little shouting. Thomas was relieved. “My name is Thomas Barrow. I was born in England in eighteen-eighty-nine. I was transported here, a few months ago by what I’m told we’re calling a Spatio-Temporal Event. I’m afraid I can’t say very much about the event itself. I was on my way home from the pub at the time.” People laughed at that. Captain Rogers had said that they would, and that that was good. “I remember being swept up, as though by a strong wind, and then I lost consciousness. Shortly after I woke up, I was found by Mr. Stark and some ladies and gentlemen from SHIELD. I was a guest of SHIELD for some weeks, and then Mr. Stark was kind enough to offer me a job.”

When Thomas paused for breath, and there was a great deal of shouting. As instructed, Thomas remained silent until it stopped. “Mr. Stark and the other Avengers have all been very kind; Captain Rogers has been particularly helpful. He told me that you’d probably like to know a few things about me. I’m afraid I’m not really all that interesting. For most of my life I’ve worked in domestic service—I was a footman, a valet, and an under-butler. I was a medic in the Great War, which I’m told you know as World War One. Then after that ended, I went back to me old job. Apart from the war, I’d never been abroad before, but I’d always wanted to see New York, so I’m quite pleased to be here now.”

They liked that, too—as Captain Rogers had said they would. “I understand there’s a great deal of interest in my impressions of the 21st century, but as I’ve only seen a bit of it, I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient. Thank you for respecting my privacy as I make this adjustment. Any requests for interviews or statements can reach me through the public relations department at Stark Industries.” He stepped back, and Rachel from public relations took the podium.

“Was that all right?” Thomas asked Mr. Stark.

“Yeah, it was good.”

Meanwhile, Rachel was saying, “Tony and Thomas have time for just a few questions. We’ll start with here, in the front, in the pink?”

“Yes, why was this information kept from the public for so long? We heard about the plesiosaur and the Chinese warriors almost immediately. Why was the big secret?”

Mr. Stark stepped forward. “Frankly, one butler appearing in a remote area is a lot easier to keep secret than two tons of marine reptile splashing around near some of the most popular beaches in America, or a dozen armed warriors in a shopping mall. We were able to give Thomas some privacy as he made his initial adjustment to the 21st century.”

The woman in pink tried to ask something else, but Rachel called on someone else, who asked, “Many of our viewers believe that this is a hoax, or a publicity stunt. What do you say to that?”

“I have no need for publicity stunts,” Mr. Stark said. “Next?”

“Do I see the BBC back there?” Rachel asked. “Yes, let’s see if Thomas has anything to say to his fellow Britons.”

“Thank you,” said the BBC reporter. “Thomas, why have you settled in the United States, instead of coming home to the UK?”

“Ah—mostly because I was offered the job here,” Thomas said. “I would like to go back to England one day, either to visit or to live there again, but for now I’m comfortable where I am.” Both Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark had warned him on no account to mention his upcoming trip.

Mr. Stark grabbed the microphone and added, “SHIELD offered Thomas several options, including repatriation to England and higher education.”

“We have time for one more question, I think,” Rachel said, and called on another reporter. 

“Yes, Thomas, have you asked the Asgardians about sending you back to 1921? Would you want to go if you could?”

“I haven’t spoken to them personally on the subject, but I’ve been told they’re not able to send me back,” Thomas said. “So I’ve been trying to put the past behind me and start a new life here and now.”

#

Tony stayed up much later than he should have, wrapping up projects and keeping an eye on the developing news stories about Thomas. On the plus side, few of the stories were going with the “Tony Stark is pretending to have a time-traveling butler because he is a sad and pathetic individual who can never have enough attention” narrative. 

On the minus side, a number of them had opted instead for, “Tony Stark is exploiting a time traveler by coercing him into being his butler.” He sent an email to Rachel, asking her to release appropriate details about Thomas’s employment conditions, but he knew it wouldn’t make much of a difference. 

As the night got later, he told himself he’d sleep on the plane, even though he knew he wouldn’t—he never did. Then he had to drag himself out of bed after only a few hours’ sleep, and it was a good thing Thomas hadn’t paid any attention to what Tony said about this not being a working vacation for him, because if he hadn’t packed Tony’s luggage for him, he’d have ended up dumping his underwear drawer into a suitcase as he ran out the door.

He did take the time to throw together a tool kit and grab the suitcase Suit. By the time he was done doing that, the car was waiting outside, and Tony had to leave without breakfast, and ask Happy to swing by a drive-through on the way to the airport.

After he’d placed his order—coffee, couple of hash browns, egg white egg McMuffin—he asked Thomas, “You want anything?”

“I already had breakfast, thanks.”

“That’s it,” Tony said into the speaker. When he looked back at Thomas, he was shaking his head. “What?”

“Sometimes I think about how I’d explain things to people I knew before,” Thomas answered. “For example, a restaurant where one orders by shouting into a sign, and one’s meal is then handed out of a window in a >paper sack.” He sounded absolutely scandalized by it.

Apparently, Project Get Thomas to Talk was as simple as taking him on vacation. “They wouldn’t approve?”

“I expect Mr. Carson—the butler at my old place—would see it as a sign of the downfall of civilization. Then again, he thought that about cocktails, maids in the dining room, and letting a footman and a maid go to the cinema when it wasn’t their half-day, too.”

“He must’ve been fun at parties,” Tony observed.

“He wasn’t exactly known for his sense of humor.”

Happy had pulled around the building by then, and Tony leaned out the window to pay and collect his breakfast, in a paper sack. 

Despite the detour, they made it to the plane just in time for their takeoff window—a plus, in Tony’s opinion, since it didn’t give the pilot any time to dick around. He liked to personally remind Tony of certain FAA regulations before takeoff, but as it was, they barely had time to get in their seats, buckle their seatbelts, and watch the cabin crew run through a very rapid version of the safety demonstration. 

As the plane began taxiing, Tony said, “Here’s some decline of civilization for you—my old corporate jet, from my pre-Iron Man days, had a stripper pole.”

“I’m not sure what that is,” Thomas admitted.

“Okay. How far do I have to back up? Strippers are women who take their clothes off in front of an audience.”

“Yes, we had those. But I don’t think they did anything with poles. As far as I know. I’m not an expert.”

“I am,” Tony said cheerfully. “A stripper pole is….” Kind of hard to explain, actually, he realized. “They just kind of spin around it, and hang off it, stuff like that. While they’re taking their clothes off.”

“Ah,” Thomas said, glancing toward the galley, where the flight attendants were sitting. Since one was about fifty, and the other was a kind of ugly man, it wasn’t too difficult to follow his train of thought.

“I also used to only hire stewardesses who were hot and willing to take their clothes off while I watched,” Tony explained. “Pepper, Natasha, Steve, and Bruce all ganged up on me about how I was being a pig, so those are not longer requirements for a job on the StarkOne cabin crew.” Belatedly, Tony realized that telling a guy who worked for him, who he wanted to bang, all about how he used to systematically sexually harass his flight attendants might be strategically unwise. “I was kind of an asshole back then,” he added, a bit lamely. “I don’t wanna say the whole being held captive by terrorists thing made me a better man, but—well, actually, no, that wasn’t it,” Tony realized. “After I was Iron Man, I started hanging out with people who call me on it when I’m being an asshole. And I started listening to them when they did.” Rhodey and Pepper had tried, from time to time, in the old days, but he’d always been able to round up other passengers for the Fun Car if they became too annoying on the subject of his being a self-destructive dick. “So this is the new, improved Tony Stark, if you can believe it. Now with fifty percent less assholishness.” He considered. “Maybe a third less.”

“I see,” Thomas said. “When I was starting out, being handsome to look at was a requirement for being a footman in the best houses. Although I’m not aware of any where they made you take your clothes off.” He cocked his head to one side. “And I expect I would have heard.”

“Oh? Would you have applied?”

“Hm. I suppose that depends.”

“On?”

“Any number of things,” Thomas answered mysteriously. 

#

Mr. Stark’s—Tony’s—private plane was certainly more luxurious than the SHIELD ones. It was furnished with overstuffed seats and couches, and had a small kitchen near the front. A bit like the private railway cars the American robber barons had, Thomas supposed. 

The plane took a great deal more time to get into the air than the SHIELD ones did, but it was also quite a bit quieter. And it was, as the cabin crew explained, equipped with oxygen masks and seat cushions that could be used as flotation devices “in the event of a water landing.” 

Thomas wondered if he ought to be alarmed by that, but given that he’d spent several weeks living in a flying ship, he couldn’t manage to be terribly concerned. And a bit of light flirting with Mr—with _Tony_ , took his mind off any fears he might have had.

Once the plane was fully in the air, and the pilot announced that they were “Free to move about the cabin,” the not particularly attractive, fully clothed stewardess came to ask if they wanted drinks. 

“Bloody Mary, I think,” said Tony. “You?”

“Why not?” Thomas said. 

When the woman returned with the drinks—they proved to be tomato juice laced with vodka and some kind of spice—Tony asked, “How was the flight yesterday? Did the kid have fun?”

“She sure did,” said the stewardess. “Hang on, I have a picture.” Taking out one of the ubiquitous Starkphones, she showed first Tony, then Thomas, a picture of a family sitting on the aeroplane sofa; in the middle was a young girl, very thin, with no hair. 

“Cute,” said Tony. 

“Uh—yes,” said Thomas.

“And you gave her the, the action figures and stuff?” Tony went on. 

“We did! She liked them a lot.”

“Cool,” Tony said. When the stewardess had gone, he explained, “It’s, uh…there’s this thing, charity, they send sick kids to amusement parks, or wherever they want to go, really. Really sick kids, I mean, cancer and stuff. You let them use your private jet for a couple of trips a year, and it’s a huge tax write-off.”

_He keeps his virtues hidden_ , Captain Rogers had said. “I see.”

#

“I have nothing to declare but my genius,” Tony informed the Customs man. He kept an eye on Thomas, but unfortunately, he didn’t seem to get the reference. That was a shame; Tony had been saving it up. “Plus an Iron Man suit and whatever Thomas brought,” he added.

Thomas was studying the laminated card on the counter that explained what you had to declare. “Ah, I have a pack and a half of cigarettes and twenty-two hundred dollars in US currency.”

“God,” Tony said. “Why are you carrying so much cash?”

“You gave it to me,” Thomas reminded him. “After the party.”

“I know, but don’t you have a bank account?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “I thought I’d be able to find somewhere to exchange it, once we got here.”

“Yeah, there’ll be a place,” Tony said. “But you could just use your debit card.”

The Customs man broke in. “You only have to declare cash in excess of 10,000 euros, or cigarettes in excess of 200.”

“Then I’m all right on cigarettes,” Thomas said. “But I don’t know what twenty-two hundred dollars is in euros.”

“It’s less than ten thousand,” Tony said. But still a little ridiculous to be carrying around in cash. To the Customs guy, he added, “I have an affidavit explaining that the Iron Man suit is a prosthesis, not an offensive weapon, so we can skip the argument about it. Here.” He handed the document over, along with his passport. 

The Customs guy scrutinized it, then tapped away at his computer keyboard for a while. “Mr. Stark, I’m seeing here that you came for a previous visit in August and never left.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I ended up flying out in the suit, so I didn’t get my passport stamped.” 

Customs guy looked unimpressed.

Digging into his inside jacket pocket, Tony produced his SHIELD “visiting forces” ID, and added that to the stack of documents the Customs guy had. It usually helped smooth over suit-related Customs issues.

The guy sighed, shook his head, and tapped away at his keyboard some more, but eventually decided that Tony could enter the country. After all that, Tony was a little worried about _Thomas’s_ passport, which was genuinely a little bit irregular, since it said he was a citizen of the UK, but he didn’t have any UK-issued documents, but the guy barely glanced at it before stamping him through.

“Didn’t that fellow know who you are?” Thomas asked, once they were clear of the Customs barrier. 

“No, he knew,” Tony said. “They like to make a point about how they don’t have to treat you any better than anyone else just because you happen to be richer than God. And/or a superhero.”

“England certainly has changed,” Thomas observed. 

#

The airport was less busy and crowded than Thomas would have thought. He’d expected something like a London railway station, but while the building was fairly large, and had a few shops selling food, drink, and things for people to read on their journeys, there weren’t very many people. Perhaps traveling by aeroplane wasn’t quite as routine as he had thought?

But when he asked, Tony said, “Nah, it’s just because it’s late, and the middle of the week. Well—and this is kind of a small airport. I’m sure they’re busier in the morning and afternoon.”

Another surprise was that there were no porters. Thomas wasn’t precisely pleased to watch his employer carrying his own bags, but between them they had four cases and the small briefcase that held the portable Iron Man suit, so he didn’t have much choice. 

When he asked about _that_ , Tony said, “No, you’re right, I guess they don’t. Ten or fifteen years ago there used to be signs saying they had them, but you could never find one. Now, there are supposed to be carts you can put your bags on, but you can never find those, either.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter much. Thomas supposed it didn’t, really, but he was quite sure that if Lord Grantham or Phillip, Duke of Crowborough, had been made to suffer the indignity of carrying their own luggage through a railway station, they’d not have got over it for days. But Tony just continued, “Car hire, that’s what we want.”

At the car-hire counter, Tony filled out quantities of paperwork that seemed more suited to _buying_ a car than simply hiring one. At last, the attendant handed him a set of keys, saying, “There you are, Mr. Stark. Parking slot twelve, right in front.”

Then they had to pick up all the bags again and tote them outside, where Tony let out a low whistle and said, “Well done, Jarvis,” when he saw the car.

It looked much like all modern cars did to Thomas—awkwardly low to the ground and somewhat insect-like—but he was glad Tony was pleased with it. After cramming the luggage into the inconveniently-small boot, Tony got behind the wheel, and they drove off.

At first, particularly as they left the immediate area of the airport, modern England looked a great deal like America. There were street lights everywhere, and traffic signals, and garishly-lit restaurants and shops. Everything that wasn’t lit up was paved, it seemed, and still cars were fighting for every inch of space. But once they broke free of the town, and were skimming over darkened roads, Thomas could believe he was in Yorkshire again. 

On their approach, Downton seemed to be lit from within like a Chinese lantern. As they drew closer, Thomas saw that the illusion was created by exterior lights lining the drive and flanking the main doors, as well as the large number of lit windows—far more than the generator in his day could have handled. It looked like every window on the ground floor was lit up, and more than half of the windows on the other floors. 

“That’s a big house,” Tony observed.

“Yes.”

“And when you worked there, there was only one family living in that whole house? Even _I_ think that’s excessive.”

“Well, it was an extended family. And about fifty indoor staff.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure that makes it better,” Tony said. 

They drove right up to the front doors. Thomas was mildly surprised not to see the household turned out to greet them. Not that he had really _expected_ Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes and all the others, but he would have thought there’d be _someone_. 

Tony hesitated, looking out through the car’s windscreen. “Do you see—oh, there it is.” He pulled the car up to a sign that said, “Registration Parking Only,” and shut it off. He hopped out of the car, grabbing from behind his seat the case that held the portable armour. Thomas hesitated, wondering if he ought to do something about the rest of the baggage—and if so, _what_ —until Tony said, “Just leave everything else. If _they_ don’t have somebody to carry our bags, I’m gonna be real disappointed.”

They went inside, Thomas doing his best to quash the thought that he really ought to be going around back. They entered into the familiar hall, with a new addition—a polished wooden counter, placed just to the side of the main staircase. A young woman wearing a blue blazer was sitting behind it; when they entered, she stood. “Good evening, and welcome to Downton Abbey. Will we have the pleasure of having you as our guest to dine, or to stay?”

Thomas had the uncomfortable sense that she was trying somehow to imitate the way they would have received visitors at Downton in _his_ day. But they would have had no need to ask, since any guests would be known and expected.

“Both,” Tony said cheerfully. “We’re hoping to get some dinner, if it’s not too late, and we have a couple of rooms reserved. Under Stark. Tony Stark.”

“You do?” she asked, suddenly speaking in moderately broad Yorkshire. “But—I mean, I’ll be happy to look that up for you, Mr. Stark.” She turned to her computer screen and typed rapidly. “Okay. I see you’ve reserved two of our Skytop Suites. Usually the manager lets us know about any particularly distinguished guests we’re expecting, but it’s right here in the computer.”

“I thought it might be,” said Tony. 

“Right. Um. Okay. Will you be keeping a car with us?”

“Yep. It’s the candy-apple red Aston-Martin. Right out front.” He put the keys on the desk. 

“Of course. Guest parking is in the old stables, but I can have someone take it around. Will you be needing assistance with luggage?”

“Yep,” Tony said again. “It’s in the candy-apple red Aston Martin.”

“Certainly. And the registration plate number?”

Tony glanced over his shoulder at Thomas, who shrugged. “It’s a rental,” Tony explained. “So I don’t know. But you can’t miss it. It’s a candy-apple red Aston-Martin.”

“Are you enjoying saying ‘candy-apple red Aston-Martin,’ sir?” the young woman asked. 

“Yes, I am,” Tony agreed. 

The desk clerk rang a bell, and a young man came shambling out of a nearby room, wearing a blue blazer like hers. “Margie, what—” He stopped short. “You’re, uh, you’re--”

“Yeah,” Tony said. 

“Wha’re you doin’ ‘ _ere_?” the young man asked. _That_ would have given Carson a heart attack for certain, if he hadn’t had one already. 

“Right now, he’s trying to check in,” the clerk—Margie, apparently—said. “I need you to park the car, get the plate number for the registration card, and bring in their luggage. It’s the--” She turned to Tony.

“Candy-apple red Aston-Martin!” he announced. “Okay, I think that’s out of my system now.” He picked up the keys and tossed them to the young man, who very nearly succeeded in catching them. “Try not to scratch the paint, if you can manage it. It’s a rental.”

The young man proceeded out the front door, his general demeanor giving Thomas little cause for confidence in the safety of the rented Aston-Martin’s paint. Margie proceeded to give Mr. Stark a little paper folder, containing plastic cards that she claimed were room keys. “To get there, you’ll take the lift to the top floor, then your rooms are at the end of the passage, one on each side. But--” She half-turned to look over her shoulder at a familiar long-case clock. “The main dining room only seats until half-past. The light fare menu in the bar goes until midnight, but if you want, like, _proper_ dinner, I should hurry.”

“We’ll do that,” Tony said. “Thanks--”

“Oh! Marjorie Bennett.”

“Thanks, Marjorie. Now, the dining room is…?”

“Just to the right.”

Where it had always been, Thomas thought, but when they got there—going straight there, without going up to dress first—it turned out that several doorways had been enlarged, and a couple of walls knocked out entirely, creating a series of connected rooms in what had been the dining room, the breakfast room, the drawing room, and a couple of other rooms Thomas had never seen used. These were furnished with small tables, each seating two or four diners, draped in white tablecloths and glittering with what struck Thomas as a fairly paltry collection of glassware and silver. 

It appeared that the way they were dressed was perfectly fine—no one was in evening dress or even black tie. Most of the men wore suits, and the women dresses, but he saw a fair number of men in the ubiquitous khaki or even denim trousers and open-collared shirts, as well as women in slacks. One particularly stout example of the sex was wearing a tentlike blouse patterned to resemble the skin of a leopard. It was a little disconcerting to know that such people were now welcome to dine at Downton whenever they liked. 

A young woman in black trousers and a white shirt escorted them to a table in what Thomas believed had once been a corner of the drawing room. Once they were seated, she presented them each with a large, leather-bound folder, which proved to be the bill of fare. 

“What do you think?” Tony asked, once the young woman had been told what cocktails they’d like and left. “You’re being kinda…quiet. Are you freaking out on me?”

“I’m all right,” Thomas said. “It’s just a bit strange—some things look exactly the same, and others are completely different.” Like the menu, for instance. He’d halfway expected that he’d find the food in England more familiar than that in America, but even a glance at the menu proved that modern Englishmen shared the culinary peculiarities of their American contemporaries. 

“If you decide it’s too weird and you want to go somewhere else, speak up,” Tony said. “I won’t mind, but I’m not a mind reader.”

“Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” To forestall any more personal questions, Thomas went on, “Here’s something I’ve been wondering. Did something happen to make everyone so fond of noodles? I thought it might be an American thing, but apparently not.” The menu had an entire page devoted to things like vegetarian lasagna, fettuccini alfredo, and mushroom ravioli, which Thomas’s growing familiarity with microwavable meals enabled him to identify as noodles, noodles, and more noodles. It was baffling.

“I…don’t know,” Tony said after a moment. “You’re right, you do see pasta everywhere. I think some people think it’s healthier than, you know, meat and potatoes.” Turning the page of his own menu, he added, “There is some other stuff. On the page after the noodles.”

“Yes, I see.” That was a strange mishmash, too. There were several things that Thomas could easily imagine Mrs. Patmore making for a grand dinner, like quail or filet of beef, and others that might have gone up for a family dinner, like chicken _en casserole_ or loin of pork. Alongside them were other things that would only have appeared in the servants’ hall, if at all—like fish pie or Yorkshire pudding—and others that he had was sure Mrs. Patmore had never heard of, like a “sweet corn and mango salsa,” whatever that was, that came something he gathered from context must be a fish of some kind. “There’s certainly a great deal to choose from.” Before, even an hotel—which, he had to remind himself, Downton now was—would usually only give two choices for each course. Here, he gathered they expected you to choose, at most, a starter, a main dish, and a sweet, but there were over a dozen choices for each. More if you counted all the different kinds of noodles. 

#

Somehow, Tony didn’t think that Thomas was having a very nice time. He kept looking over his shoulder like he expected something to jump out at him. “I know a fun game to play at restaurants,” Tony suggested. 

Thomas turned his attention back from watching the waiter at a neighboring table. “What’s that?”

“Let’s try to guess who’ll be first to ask me for an autograph.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. He took another glance around. “The woman in the leopard-print blouse. Or her companion in the short trousers and baseball cap.”

“Ooh, rookie mistake,” Tony said. “They’d be the last ones. See, this is clearly the classiest place they’ve ever been in their lives. They’ll be trying not to embarrass themselves by doing the wrong thing. Maybe if they had a kid with them, but without one? No way. No, first’ll be polo shirt and Tommy Hilfinger sunglasses, over there. After he breaks the ice, we might hear from the ugly Americans.”

The game did seem to cheer Thomas up a little, so Tony figured it did its job, even though it turned out none of them were right. The first autograph-seeker was actually their waitress. Thomas was gleefully appalled. “Mr. Carson,” he declared, “would have killed her. Throttled her in the servants’ hall, if his disapproving stare wasn’t enough to finish her off on the spot.”

“Jarvis—human Jarvis—used to say things like that about the butler where he worked before he was ours,” Tony observed. “Modern butlers must be a softer breed. I’ve never met any really scary ones.”

“I expect it’s different when you don’t work under them,” Thomas said. “Carson was very chummy with Lady Mary, f’r instance. It was only us servants who were expected to be intimidated by him.”

After dinner—which wasn’t half bad, in Tony’s opinion—they went up to their rooms. As soon as they stepped off the elevator, Thomas started shaking his head and smiling. Tony had kept the wine coming during dinner, on the theory that Thomas could stand to relax more, and it seemed to have worked. “What?” Tony asked, sorting out the key cards. 

“What did they say these rooms were called?”

“I don’t know. Sky something or other.”

“It used to be the servant’s quarters,” Thomas said. “Bet they’ve remodeled.”

“I hope so,” Tony said. “Here—which one do you want?” The two rooms were on opposite sides of the hall; he held out one key-card in each hand. “I think they’re both about the same.”

“Oh—well, my room used to be on this side,” he said, taking the card in Tony’s left hand. 

“Yeah?” Tony asked. “Where?”

“Sort of—there,” Thomas said, pointing at a blank stretch of wall. “It looks like they’ve made the rooms bigger. Joined them up or something.”

“That would make sense.” It was pretty clear that Thomas didn’t have the first idea how to work a card lock, so Tony took the card back and opened it for him, explaining how it worked. “I’ll be right over here,” he added, pointing at the room across the hall, “if you wanna… talk or something. After you get settled.” Tony wasn’t sure how soon Thomas might be interested in “something,” but he wanted to get it right out there that Thomas was welcome in his room any time.

He checked out his own room, which was nice enough—it was kind of long and narrow, which fit with the idea that it used to be several smaller rooms with the dividing walls knocked out. There was a nice big bed, decent-sized TV. He puttered around a little, bouncing on the bed, turning on the TV, checking out the amenity basket in the bathroom. There was a folder on the desk with brochures about the hotel and the nearby town; seeing that the place had a gift shop, Tony decided to buy the tackiest thing they had and sneak it into Thomas’s room at home. There was also a small museum on the ground floor, “focusing on the history of the house and the Crawley family.” Not something Tony would normally be into, but he supposed Thomas might like it.

As Tony was checking out the tragically under-stocked minibar, there was a knock at the door. He opened it to find Thomas. He had his jacket off, which somehow had the effect of making him look sort of undressed, even though he was still showing less skin than just about anybody else would in anything short of arctic conditions. “Hi,” said Tony, taking a step backward.

“Hi,” Thomas said, coming in. Tony didn’t think he’d ever heard him use the word before. “They put one of your suitcases in my room.”

“Oh,” said Tony. He hoped Thomas was using that as an _excuse_ , not the sole purpose of his visit. “Thanks,” he said, taking it. “I’m having a drink—you want one?”

“I do, thanks.”

“You can have your choice of dubious whiskey, lousy gin, so-so vodka, or terrible wine,” Tony told him. “We’ll have to look for someplace to get a decent bottle of something when we’re out and about tomorrow.”

“They must have some decent liquor somewhere in the house,” Thomas said, looking at the assortment of tiny bottles in Tony’s hands. “I could go look.”

“Nah. They always put the cheap stuff in minibars. And then charge you an arm and a leg for it. I think the idea is that if you aren’t willing to leave the room, you must not care what you drink. Tell you what; I’m going to have a vodka and Orangina. Hides the taste. You want to try one of those?”

“Why not?”

While Tony fixed the drinks, Thomas started unpacking his things. Tony thought about reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to be working on this trip, but decided not to—if he did, Thomas might get it into his head that Tony was trying to get rid of him. 

Thomas didn’t seem to be fully in work-mode, anyway—as he unpacked, he nattered on about how the room had changed since he’d lived here. “There’s a bath right where my old bedroom used to be. A bath and a cupboard.”

“Yeah?” Tony said, handing Thomas his drink. 

“Mm-hm,” Thomas said, sipping at it. “So I don’t think I’ll wake up and forget where—when—I am. The windows are about the only thing that’s the same.”

Tony said something about how that was probably for the best, wandering over and sitting on the bed. “Did you—like it, when you worked here? It’s hard to tell.”

“I liked it well enough, I suppose,” Thomas said, as he sipped at his vodka and Orangina, and put away the last few of Tony’s clothes. “Some parts of it more than others,” he added, coming over toward Tony with a more relaxed stride than Tony had ever seen him use.

“Yeah?” Tony was still trying to think of a follow-up question when Thomas sat down next to him, plucked the nearly-empty glass out of his hand, and kissed him. 

It was kind of a surprise—Tony had been figuring he’d have to make the first move, and make it pretty slowly if he didn’t want Thomas to get spooked, but hey— _good_ surprise. He tasted like vodka and oranges, and was a surprisingly good kisser. Somehow, Tony would have expected him to have had much _practice_ , no matter what Kingsley said.

Tony rolled with it right up until Thomas got his hand between them and started working on his fly. “Hey, wait,” Tony said, separating his mouth from Thomas’s. “Hold up a sec.”

In the blink of an eye, Thomas backed up halfway across the room. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said stiffly. “I must have—misunderstood something.” He looked _instantly_ stone-cold sober.

“No,” Tony said soothingly. “Pretty sure you didn’t.”

Thomas didn’t seem to hear him. “I should go. If there’s nothing else you need—”

“Would you hang on a minute?” He took Thomas’s hand and tugged him back over to the bed. “I just wanted to check,” he explained, “that this is really something you want to do. You’re not feeling rushed or pressured or any of that—stuff that gets me sued.”

“Ah,” Thomas said. Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “No. I mean, yes, I do want to—it’s fine.”

“Okay, then. I didn’t think you old-fashioned guys went for pants-off action on the first date. It’s totally cool with me,” he added quickly. “Just, you know—checking.”

Hesitantly, Thomas picked up his drink from the nightstand and joined Tony on the bed again, this time sitting a foot or so away from him. “There weren’t usually _dates_ at all.”

“But you have--” Tony made a vague hand gesture. 

“Of course I have.” Thomas looked around shiftily. “You’d just sort of—skip right to the main event. It wasn’t like you could ask a bloke to go to the pictures with you.”

“I guess not,” Tony said. He hadn’t really thought about it. “What did you do, then? Were there, like, bars? Secret ones?”

“Some,” Thomas said. “Actually, most of the men I was—with, I valeted them when they came here to stay. Sort of convenient, really, except every now and then you read one wrong, and things might be a bit awkward.”

“So the unpacking my stuff was, like, a move?” Tony asked. 

“Not exactly. Usually guests would come in the afternoon, so I’d unpack their cases then. When you’re undressing them, that’s the time to find out…where things stand.”

That sounded a little backwards to Tony, but he had to remind himself—helping guys get undressed was Thomas’s job. “How d’you do that?”

“Well, I’d usually start by asking them something that’s not really my place to ask.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, anything. Usually I’d have been waiting at table at dinner, too, so I could just ask about something they talked about there. Like if he mentions he knows Lord So-and-So, say something about how I know his man, or I valeted him last time he was here.”

“Wouldn’t your Mr. Carson disapprove of that?”

“Of course he would. But the gentleman isn’t likely to complain—and even if he did, you can’t get arrested for being a bit chatty.”

Right; Tony had forgotten for a moment that Thomas would have been facing higher stakes than just being shot down. 

“Anyway,” Thomas went on, “if they answer your impertinent questions, you’re in with a chance. Then you just touch them a bit more than strictly necessary, and if they don’t object to that, matters are pretty clear.”

“Doesn’t the other guy ever make the first move?” Tony asked, shifting a little bit closer.

“Sometimes, sure. Not as often as you might think. It isn’t considered quite gentlemanly to make advances on your friends’ servants. If they do and you’re not interested, you just pretend you don’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about. One time this fellow told me Phi—that a bloke we both knew, said I was ‘a bit of a sport.’ I had to babble about cricket like an imbecile for ten solid minutes before he realized I wasn’t going to play along.”

Tony was glad to hear that—he’d been wondering if Lord Whatshisname that Thomas had worked for had been pimping him out on purpose. “So they never, like, got handsy when you didn’t want them to?”

“No, I never had that happen—a bloke I know, knew, told me if that does happen you tell them they’ve clearly had a bit too much to drink and mistaken you for someone else, but I never had to try it. Why, how do blokes do it now?”

“I usually just invited them back to my room. Or grabbed their dick in the men’s room. Whatever. But you can ask guys out on dates. Or chat them up at a bar and get their number, stuff like that. Or there’s an app you can get for your phone to find guys nearby who’re looking to hook up.” Thinking that phrase might be unfamiliar to Thomas, Tony added, “Hooking up is just, like, meeting somebody for sex that you don’t know and never plan to see again.”

“Oh, people still do that? I wondered, with all the—marriage business.”

“Oh, yeah. Not as much as they used to back before AIDS, but yeah.”

“We—there were no telephones involved, but there used to be a theatre in Soho where you’d go and stand in the back. Or nightclubs, but they were always getting raided by the police and shutting down and reopening somewhere else, so if you only got to London once or twice a year, like I did, you’d have to know someone who could tell you where the latest places were.” 

“And did you?”

“Before the war, I did. There were a few years there when all the young ladies were coming out—having their debuts, I mean—so the whole household would go down to London for the whole Season. Met quite a few blokes I stayed in touch with. But after the war—well, quite a few were killed, some ended up working outside London, a few decided since their lives had been spared they were going to live lives of virtue from then out. You know.”

“Familiar with the concept, yeah.” A lot of guys he’d known during his party decades had settled down after something they interpreted as a brush with death. 

#

Thomas had spent more time talking with Tony than he could remember doing with any partner other than Phillip—or Crowborough, as he ought to think of him. And whom he didn’t really want to think about right now. It was nice, really, now that he’d gotten over his scare—for a moment, when Tony had stopped him, he’d been afraid it was going to be the incident of the Turkish ambassador all over again—though at least, he hoped, without finding the man dead in the morning. 

Everything seemed to be all right now. He wasn’t sure why Mr. Stark—Tony—had thought it necessary to make sure that Thomas “really wanted” to do what they were doing, when it was Thomas who had gotten things started, but future-people had their little peculiarities. 

It did seem to take quite a long time before they worked back up to kissing again, but even that wasn’t so bad—it did drive home the point that they didn’t have to worry about being discovered, or about Thomas being missed downstairs, or anything like that. 

Breaking off a languorous kiss, Tony ran his hand up Thomas’s chest and said, “Well, what do you want to _do_?”

Thomas gave him a _look_. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Yeah—I mean, _which_? Hands, mouths, the full monty—just trying to get an idea what you’re up for.”

Thomas couldn’t remember anyone ever actually _asking_. In his experience, one or the other of you just got started, and the other party could object, or—more usually—not. “Ah,” Thomas said. “Well.”

“Or, you know, whatever,” Tony added, looking concerned.

“It’s fine,” Thomas said quickly. “I just—why don’t we start with hands, and then see how we feel?”

#

In the morning, they went down to breakfast. Thomas was a little surprised that Tony was up in time for it—the notice on the desk said breakfast was available until 9:30, which seemed an early hour for Mr. Stark. Breakfast was served in the expanded dining room—though not, oddly enough, in the part that used to be the breakfast room. Hot things—eggs, sausages, and so on—were out in chafing dishes, like normal, though there were little labels attached to each one, saying what was inside, and the selection included some newly-familiar things like bagels and little cartons of cold cereal. 

Thomas did not understand cold cereal. As far as he was concerned, porridge’s only virtue was that it was hot; take that away and you might as well feed it to pigs. 

As they breakfasted, Tony occupied himself with his phone, as he and the others generally did when breakfasting at home. He wasn’t the only one, so apparently this was acceptable behavior for adults in an hotel breakfast-room, though Thomas did overhear one adolescent being told off by his mum for it.

“Hah,” Tony said after a while.

“What?”

“Apparently one of the catering guys gave an interview where he said you can’t possibly be from 1921, because he saw you using a Starkphone. Now marketing wants to know if they can use that in the new ad campaign—so easy a time-traveler can use it?” Tony shook his head. “They tried the same thing with Steve; he said no, but I’ll have them shoot you an email so you can decide for yourself.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel about appearing in advertisements—though he supposed if they’d pay him to do so, that would be another matter. 

“Apart from that, most of the coverage is the same kind of stuff as before,” Tony went on. “Nobody seems to have caught on that you’re in England now. British Airways has offered you a free ticket any time you want to come.”

“I suppose that’s nice of them.” It wouldn’t do much good without a job offer attached—even if he wasn’t happy where he was—but it was hard to object to being offered something free. 

“What do you have in mind for the day?” Tony asked, putting his phone aside.

“Oh, well, I thought I’d have a look round as much of the house and grounds as I can,” Thomas said. “Unless you’ve another idea.” He wasn’t entirely sure how this business of being on holiday with his employer was supposed to work. It didn’t seem quite right to assume that just because they were—doing what they’d done last night, Mr. Stark desired his constant companionship. But at the same time, it didn’t seem wise to make too many plans of his own without consulting Tony’s preferences. 

But Tony just said, “Sounds fine. I want to go find a liquor store sometime, but that isn’t going to take all day.”

“Of course.” Thomas had no idea where such things could be bought these days, or what the opening hours were, but he supposed he could find an opportunity to ask one of the hotel staff. “Afternoon’s probably better for that,” he ventured. 

“Yeah.”

As they were finishing up with breakfast, a woman approached their table. She was on the young side of middle age, dressed neatly but plainly in trousers and a blouse. When Thomas recognized her from the website photographs, he was nearly on his feet before he caught himself. 

“Good morning,” she said. “I’m Violet Crawley, co-manager here at Downton. I hope you’re finding everything to your liking?”

Thomas literally could not answer, and was glad when Tony did. “Yeah, everything’s great. Thanks.”

“I’m so glad. I’d have been on hand to welcome you personally, but I’m afraid we weren’t quite expecting you.” She gave a stilted laugh. “The clerk who took the booking must not have realized.”

“It’s fine,” Tony said. “We wanted to keep a low profile on this trip.”

“Of course. I’ve reminded the staff of the importance of respecting the privacy of all our guests.”

She must have heard about the autograph-seeking waitress last night, Thomas thought. 

“If any of the other guests, or any day visitors, become a nuisance, please don’t hesitate to inform one of the staff, and we’ll take care of it,” she added. 

“Sure,” Tony said. “I don’t really mind, but Thomas here is trying to stay away from the press for a little bit.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at Thomas. “I suppose you must be….”

“Thomas Barrow, my lady.”

“Goodness, I can barely remember the last time someone’s called me that. I saw you on telly. So it is—I don’t want to seem a credulous rube, but it is _true_ , then?”

Tony looked across the table at Thomas; apparently he was leaving that one to him. “Yes, it’s true. As a matter of fact, I used to work here, my lady. I hope you don’t think I’ve got too much nerve, just showing up. I wouldn’t have done, but—well, I suppose as it’s an hotel now, you must be used to all sorts turning up uninvited.”

“Yes, we quite are. I’m pleased you’ve come. I wondered, when I saw you on the news, if you might be…well. Perhaps you’d meet me in the museum room, when you’ve quite finished breakfast. I…there’s something I feel I should explain.” 

She sounded embarrassed to be mentioning it; Thomas wondered what it could possibly be. Apparently Tony did, too. “What kind of something?” he asked, a little bit sharply.

“Oh. One of the—historical exhibits. I hope you’ll understand that we planned it months ago, before we even knew—well. If you’ll come and look at it, then we can discuss whether it might be better to take it down.”

“All right,” Thomas said. He supposed the “historical exhibit” must have something to do with him, but he wasn’t sure why he’d object—unless it had to do with that whole mess over Jimmy, which seemed very unlikely. “I think we’re nearly finished here.” He glanced at Tony. 

“Yeah, just give us a minute, and we’ll be over,” Tony said. 

“Of course,” said Lady Violet. “It’s in what used to be the library.”

“I know just where you mean,” Thomas said. 

She left. “That was weird,” Tony said, when she had gone. 

“Perhaps they have an old photograph or two with me in it,” Thomas suggested. “There were a few.”

Once they’d finished their coffee, they went over. Thomas immediately saw that it was much worse than that. Right near the doorway, there was a large sign that said, “Ghosts of Downton Abbey.” There were a couple of blurry photographs and descriptions of the ghosts they’d talked about in Thomas’s day—a Catholic martyr from the days when there really had been an abbey on this spot, and the “leaping maiden,” who’d thrown herself from a balcony after being seduced by the first Earl’s cad of a younger son. (Though why they called her that, when the whole point of the story was that she hadn’t been a maiden anymore, Thomas had never been sure.) But in one corner of the display was a card that said “An Enduring Mystery.” With it were a group photograph of the staff from before the war, with Thomas circled; a couple of old newspaper clippings describing his disappearance and strange lights seen in the sky on the night of 24 June, 1921; and a very familiar, if a bit dingy-looking, grey fedora. 

“That’s my hat,” he said. 

“Yes,” said Lady Violet. “It’s…well, I suppose it’s a bit crass, really. We wanted to do something a bit spooky, for Hallowe’en, you know. Guests like that sort of thing. Our historian was on the hunt for ghost stories, and she found the clippings, and some letters that mentioned your disappearance. It wasn’t exactly a ghost story, but it was a mystery, so we thought we’d use it. As I say, it was all set up long before you reappeared. But I suppose we’d better take it down?”

“Er…well, I wouldn’t mind having my hat back,” he said. He didn’t really feel right telling one of the ladies of the family what she ought to do—even if she was an hotel manageress. Then he happened to look round at the other side of the display case, where he was confronted with more familiar sights. 

The first to draw the eye was an enlarged photograph of William, in his Army uniform. Below it was a Ouija board—the Ouija board, if Thomas wasn’t mistaken, a smaller photograph of Daisy, and a handwritten letter. A placard gave a somewhat romanticized account of William’s deathbed wedding to Daisy, and an even more romanticized account of the “séance” where William had urged his widow to visit his father’s farm. At the end was a suggestion that William’s spirit might still be hanging around in the former servants’ quarters.

Thomas’s first thought was, _Really? I_ disappeared into thin air, _and I have to share my side of the display with the priest and the leaping maiden, but William gets the whole other side to himself? Just bloody typical._

His next, and somewhat worthier, thought was that this really was a bit crass. More than a bit. 

Lady Violet saw where he was looking. “Oh,” she said. “I suppose you might have known him, as well.”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “We were footmen together. And he never haunted the place.”

“It’s just a bit of fun, really,” she said weakly.

“It’s not very funny, my lady.” William, the simpleton, probably wouldn’t mind having his story used for the benefit of the family, but Thomas minded it for him. “There was a—it wasn’t really a proper séance; we were just messing about with the Ouija board. The cook pretended to get a message from William, to make Daisy feel better. There’s no question of him ever really haunting the place.”

“Of course. I’ll get the curator to take it down today,” Lady Violet said. “I don’t know what we were thinking.”

“To be fair,” Tony spoke up, “you probably weren’t expecting Thomas to actually show up.”

“No—no, of course we weren’t. I’ll have it taken down straight away,” she repeated. After apologizing again, and urging them to tell her if there was anything else she could do, Lady Violet left. 

Thomas took the opportunity to read the newspaper clippings—they described him only briefly, and were devoted mainly to speculation about the strange lights. The accompanying placard had an excerpt from a letter his lordship had written to Lady Rosamund, saying, “We’ve no sooner replaced [a maid, who left the house’s employ suddenly] than Thomas—Barrow, I should call him—disappears into the night, without even leaving a note. [The butler] says he didn’t even take any of his things, either, so I we’ve had to notify the police …what a ghastly business.” Thomas could nearly hear Lord Grantham saying that last part. 

It was a bit funny, though, to think that his complete disappearance probably hadn’t made any more of a splash than that. There had probably been a bit speculation about what had happened to him—some of it perhaps a bit vulgar—and then, within a few days or a week, the gap left by his absence would have closed without a ripple. 

“You all right?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Thomas said, turning away from the display. There was no use thinking about how his disappearance would have affected—or not affected—anyone from before. “Let’s have a look at the other displays, shall we? I might see someone I know.”

#

Looking at black and white photographs of people in funny clothes wasn’t usually Tony’s idea of a good time, but it was a little bit more interesting when you had somebody there giving you the inside dirt on them. Like the one of two old ladies at a garden party, who had apparently loathed each other, or someone Thomas said was the former Lord Grantham, looking awkward while holding a white bundle that Tony supposed might contain a baby. “It was a Catholic christening, you see. His lordship wasn’t pleased at all—bad enough having an Irish chauffeur for a son-in-law, but a Catholic granddaughter. He didn’t have much choice but to put up with it, though, once Lady Mary agreed to be godmother.”

“What about the kid’s actual mother?” Tony asked. “Didn’t she get a say?”

“Oh—that was Lady Sybil. She died, in childbirth. Well—it was later that night, actually, but of complications. I suppose she and Branson would have discussed it beforehand, which religion their children would be.” Closing the photo album, Thomas added, “She’s still here—little Sybil, I mean. I hope I might see her, but I don’t imagine they trot her out for guests to gawp at.”

“Excuse me—Thomas?”

Tony turned around to see a woman with glasses and waist-length hair. “Hello,” she said, looking past Tony to Thomas and sticking out her hand. “I’m Laura—I’m in charge of the exhibits here.”

“Hello,” Thomas said, shaking her hand. “I suppose you already know who I am.”

“Yes. Ms. Crawley said you weren’t very happy about the Hallowe’en exhibit, the bit about you.”

“Actually, I’m a bit more bothered by the part about William Mason. We were—not exactly friends, but I knew him, and it seems disrespectful to be telling ghost stories about him. Especially since it’s not even true.” He repeated what he’d told the other woman about messing around with the Ouija board, adding, “I was surprised Daisy even fell for it. As to the bit about me—like I told Lady Violet, I wouldn’t mind having my hat back.”

“Was it really your hat?” Laura asked. “I was never sure. There was something in a letter about the police having found your hat when they were searching near the old Thirsk road, and then I found that one stuffed in an old trunk with your name on it, but I was never sure. It seemed very fashion-forward for a servant to have worn in the early twenties.”

“I was very fashion-forward,” Thomas said. “And yes, it’s mine. I can prove it, if you like. The hatmaker was Thompson’s, and it’s a 7 and three-eighths.”

Laura unlocked the case, with a key from a ring she had hanging from her waist, put on a pair of white cotton gloves, and took out the hat. Glancing at the inside, she said, “It certainly is.” She handed it to Thomas.

He tried it on, then took it off again. “Could do with a brushing and re-shaping,” he observed. “You said there was a trunk?”

“Yes—I suppose you ought to have a look, and see if you can find any other things that belong to you. I don’t think it can be all your things—there are some linens in there that are definitely from the 40’s—but some of it could be.”

“Thanks,” Thomas said. 

Unlocking the other side of the case, the woman started taking down the stuff about William and laying it on a cart she’d brought with her. “I wonder—do you suppose we could put something up about what really happened? With your disappearance, I mean,” she added.

“Well,” Thomas said, seeming to think it over. “It has been in the papers, me coming from 1921, but we came here hoping to get away from all that. Right now, nobody knows I worked _here_ , except us and Lady Violet. I suppose you could do after we’ve left—would that be all right?”

“Perfect,” Laura said. “Though what we’ll put in the cases for the next week, I’ve no idea…I suppose I can leave the Ouija board and write up a placard about how the servants used to play with it in the 20’s.”

“It was during the war, or just after,” Thomas said. “Not really the twenties. And really only the once, that I know of. But why not.”

“And we have some photographs of a fancy-dress party from the forties,” Laura went on. “I don’t think it was actually held near Hallowe’en, but we can be a bit vague about that. I can put up some of those, and the bit about the Oujia board, and sort of let the visitors assume it’s about how they used to celebrate Hallowe’en. And then—the two older ghost stories can stay? You don’t mind about those?”

“No, I don’t mind them,” Thomas said. 

“That should tide us over, then, until it’s time to put up the November display,” Laura decided. “That one’s very exciting—it’s in honor of Remembrance Day, about Downton’s contributions in the wars. In the Second World War, we took in evacuees, and in the Great War, the house was a convalescent hospital,” she informed them.

“I know,” Thomas said. “I was manager of it.”

“Oh!” she said, turning around. “You’re Sergeant Barrow?”

“I was, yes.”

“I never made the connection. We have a photograph of you, in your uniform. You must have known old Mrs. Abernathy’s mother—she was a nurse?”

“Lady Sybil? Yes. We—worked together.”

“We’re going to display her uniform, and some of her letters. I wonder, if it’s not too much of an imposition, if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at some of the things we have from that time—pictures and so on—and see if you can tell us a bit more about them?” 

Thomas looked over at Tony, for some reason. Tony shrugged. 

“I suppose I could,” Thomas said. “Might even be fun.”

#

“Garden party,” Thomas said, peering at another photograph. “That’s Lady Mary and Lady Edith.”

“Do you know when it was?” Laura asked eagerly. They had removed to her office, where more photographs, old letters, and other rubbish were stored. These, Laura insisted he put on a pair of white gloves, like she wore, to handle. Apparently, the things sitting out in albums in the museum room were copies, and the originals were only allowed to be handled with gloves on. 

“August,” Thomas said with a shrug. “They had it every year, nearly. Between the Flower Show and the Cricket Match. Both Lady Mary and Lady Edith were out—been presented, I mean.”

“Yes,” Laura said with a nod. “You can tell because they have their hair up.”

“So it was after 1910. And—oh, there’s William, in the background of this one,” he added, looking at the next photograph. 

“William Mason, who died in the war,” Laura said with a nod. “So, between 1910 and 1916, when he enlisted. Would they have carried on with it during the war?”

“I’m not sure,” Thomas admitted. “I wasn’t—I was in France by then. The frocks look a bit familiar, but they didn’t have new things made as often, during the war, as they did otherwise.” That, he’d heard plenty about from O’Brien, since she’d had to mess about with adding different trims and changing necklines and so on to make her ladyship’s gowns look new. “Maybe--” He glanced through the rest of the photographs in the set, thinking that if there weren’t any men standing around in uniform, that would be another clue, but one in particular settled the matter. “Oh. It was 1914,” he said, showing the historian one of Lady Grantham lying on a _chaise longue_. 

She studied it. “How do you know?”

“She’s—it’s because of how she’s dressed,” Thomas explained. 

“It’s sort of a tea gown, isn’t it?” Laura asked, looking at the photograph with a magnifying glass. “It does seem unusual for a party like that.”

“Yes. She—wasn’t well. She’d just had a miscarriage,” Thomas explained. “You won’t want to put that for public consumption, of course,” he added as the woman started typing away at her computer. 

“No,” she said quickly. “No, of course not.”

“But I remember, because it was at the garden party that we found out the war had started—Lord Grantham got a telegram about it.”

“So it would have been August 4th, 1914,” Laura said. “Perhaps I could use one or two of these in the Remembrance Day display—the calm before the storm.”

Thomas nodded; he didn’t see why not.

#

Thomas wound up spending a lot of the vacation talking to the historian. Tony didn’t mind much—it meant he could take Stark Industries calls and work up designs on his phone with a clear conscience, something that had been a source of friction on vacations with other people, from time to time. It was a welcome diversion from all the bucolic charm. 

They did make time for a little bit of bucolic charm—they visited a nearby farm, where Tony bought a great deal of jam, because that seemed to be what everyone else was doing, and had tea at something called the Dower House. It also housed a souvenir shop, where Tony selected the most inappropriate gifts possible for each of his teammates. This was made somewhat more complicated by the fact that the selection was blandly inoffensive—there were a lot of refrigerator magnets and tea-towels—but he did think the needlepoint kit of the Grantham coat of arms was a good choice for Steve. 

Another time they wound up going on a guided historic tour of the house. That happened because, as they were leaving the dining room after lunch, Thomas stopped dead in his tracks, staring at a woman dressed in the least sexy maid’s outfit Tony had ever seen, and said incredulously, “ _Anna_?”

“Close,” she said with a smile. “Amelia. Are you joining the tour, then?”

“Tour?” Thomas asked.

“You do get to see some bits of the house that aren’t normally open to the public.”

So they did. It turned out that Amelia’s great-grandparents had worked in the house. “Great Granny was lady’s maid to Mary Crawley, who’s the grandmother of the current Earl,” she explained. “And Great-Granddad was valet to Lord Robert Grantham, who was Mary Crawley’s father.”

“And a complete tosser,” Thomas said under his breath. 

Tony glanced over at him in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes. Job-stealing bastard,” Thomas added.

“Is there a question, in the back?” Amelia asked. 

“Um, no,” Tony said. 

She continued, “Then we’ll begin by stepping downstairs to see where all of the Downton servants lived and worked. There were hidden doors like this one throughout the house,” she explained, opening one that was not-quite-hidden in the wall, “which allowed the staff to move between the staff areas and the family areas without being seen.”

“Only _some_ of us weren’t supposed to be seen,” Thomas clarified to Tony as the group shuffled downstairs. “Footmen you’re _supposed_ to be able to see.”

Thomas objected to several other parts of Amelia’s spiel, but he kept his voice down enough that she didn’t hear, or at least pretended not to. While the other tourists were looking with interest at the bells hanging on the wall of the servants’ dining room, and Amelia was explaining how the family used them to summon servants to the various rooms of the house, Thomas slipped out for a moment, and returned, beckoning Tony to come with him.

He led Tony into another room that was clearly not part of the tour—it was stacked with boxes, and completely free of informative displays. “Here we have the boot room,” Thomas said in an undertone. “Where complete tossers like Mr. Bates polished his lordship’s shoes—and where kitchen maids and footmen snuck in for a bit of canoodling when no one was looking.”

“Did they?” Tony asked.

“Yes.” Thomas glanced over his shoulder, then backed Tony against a pile of boxes and kissed him soundly. “And I never got to, for obvious reasons,” he added, breaking off the kiss. “So. There we are.”

“Glad I could help,” Tony said. 

#

The second-to-last day of their holiday, Lady Violet turned up at their breakfast table again. This time, Thomas managed to entirely restrain himself from standing up, but still worried that her presence meant he was in some sort of trouble—like maybe they’d caught on that he really wasn’t supposed to be here, or had figured out what he and Mr. Stark were getting up to on a more or less nightly basis. 

Instead, after a few preliminaries about how she hoped she wasn’t disturbing them, she said, “I understand you’ll be leaving us tomorrow. Great-Aunt Sybil---Sybil Abernathy, that is—would like to meet you, while you’re still here, if you aren’t too busy.”

“Uh—okay,” Tony said. “Why?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark,” Lady Violet said. “I meant Mr. Barrow. I understand you knew her parents.”

“I did,” Thomas said. “And, ah, yes, I suppose I can see her if she likes.” They had, technically, met, when she was an infant. 

They fixed it for tea-time that afternoon. Thomas managed to restrain his incredulity at being invited to tea with one of the family. Clearly, these were lax times. 

That afternoon, though, when Mr. Kieran Abernathy fetched him from the historian’s office, and detoured by the kitchen for the tea-tray, Thomas had to remind himself several times that Mr. Abernathy was, after all, _the chauffeur’s great-grandson_ to stop himself taking the tray out of his hands. 

Miss Sybil’s rooms—Thomas knew she was properly Mrs. Abernathy, but couldn’t think of her as anything else—were up where the old nurseries used to be, but had been remodeled out of recognition. Thomas was shown into a comfortable sitting room, where an elderly lady sat by the fire, dressed in slacks and cardigan, reading a book, which she put aside when they entered.

There was a small table in front of her, and another chair opposite. Thomas stood by awkwardly while Mr. Abernathy banged the tea tray down on the table and fussed over pouring and such. “Now, is there everything you need, Granny?” Mr. Abernathy asked.

“Yes, dear,” said Miss Sybil. “You can leave us now—I believe at my age I can be trusted with a young man in my rooms.”

“Of course you can, Granny,” said Mr. Abernathy, blushing. “I’ll just--” He took himself out.

Miss Sybil gestured for Thomas to sit; he did, awkwardly. “Well!” she said. “I must say, there aren’t many things that can surprise me, these days, but Thomas Barrow turning up out of the blue certainly takes the biscuit. When I was a girl, I dreamed of meeting you.”

“What?” Thomas wondered if, perhaps, she had mixed him up with someone else. 

“Granny—my Granny, that is, Cora Crawley—told me all about you, when I was a girl.”

Thomas could not begin to imagine what she had _said_. What was there to know about him, that her ladyship would have thought suitable for a young girl’s ears? “Oh?”

“Perhaps you don’t remember,” she said. “But it wouldn’t have been so long ago, for you. Just before you disappeared, there was a nanny.”

Oh. That. 

“I don’t remember it, but apparently she was quite unkind. She thought it unsuitable, my being in the house—or simply my _existing_ , perhaps. Because of who my father was.”

“Yes,” Thomas said. Was _that_ what it had been? He’d had a feeling something wasn’t quite right, but he’d never been entirely sure whether there was anything in it, or if the woman had just put his nose out of joint by coming over all high-and-mighty with him. 

“Granny told me about it when I was about twelve, and a new governess came,” Miss Sybil went on. “Just as a sort of warning, that if there was any sign of that sort of thing, I was to tell her immediately. And she explained that it had been you who alerted her about the nasty nanny, all those years ago. I’d heard of you before—the under-butler who disappeared; George liked to make it out as a kind of ghost story. For a while I thought—this is silly, but I thought of you as a sort of guardian angel, or fairy godfather.”

Thomas had absolutely no idea what to say about _that_. Certainly he was the least likely candidate for guardian angel. Though there might have been something in the other. Miss Sybil wouldn’t have known about that, though. 

“My father died around that time,” Miss Sybil went on. “His heart; he had a condition. I remember being a bit worried they’d start treating me like Cinderella. They didn’t, of course. But I told myself if they did, you’d come back and make it all right.”

Thomas managed to stammer something about being glad there hadn’t been a need. 

“Well, as I said, it was silly, but it got me through a difficult time. I heard—now, I don’t remember where I got this idea, but I believe you knew my mother?”

“Yes—yes, I did.” So Thomas told Miss Sybil about working with Lady Sybil during the war, in the hospital and the convalescent home, and a little about her parents’ courtship—though he knew less about that than he gathered she would have liked. 

“No one ever said a word to me about it,” she said confidingly, “but I imagine it must have been quite a scandal. Running off to Ireland with the chauffeur.”

“Well, yes,” Thomas admitted. “Apparently—I only heard about this secondhand, but apparently the first thing they tried was actually running off, eloping in the night, but Lady Mary and Lady Edith went after them and tried to talk them out of it.”

“They must not have succeeded,” Miss Sybil pointed out. “As here I am.”

“They only got as far as convincing them to come back and give the family a chance to talk them out of it,” Thomas agreed. He wondered why they had ever thought _that_ would work.

“I wondered how she ever found the nerve,” Miss Sybil said. “Granny and my aunts talked about her like she was some kind of painted saint.”

Thomas had to smile at that. “No, she wasn’t.” Realizing how that sounded, he added, “Not that—she was very kind. To everyone. But she knew her own mind, and wouldn’t let anyone stand in her way.”

#

“Mr. Stark? I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.”

Tony glanced up from his Starkpad to see a British gentleman straight out of central casting—about his own age, but with less hair and chin, and considerably more nose, dressed in a tweed coat with honest-to-God elbow patches. “Maybe,” he said. 

“I’m Grantham,” he explained, sitting across from Tony. 

That would be _Lord_ Grantham, Tony realized. “Yeah,” he said. “Iron Man. Nice to meetcha.”

“You, as well,” said His Earlness, or whatever you called him. “I’ve been checking into Thomas Barrow.”

“Have you.”

“It appears that, unlikely as it seems, he is exactly who he claims to me—my family’s under-butler who disappeared some ninety years ago.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony said. Was that supposed to be news? Did this guy think Tony—not to mention SHIELD—hadn’t done any _checking_ of their own? 

“It was good of you to give the fellow a job and all that, old chap,” Grantham went on, “but I wonder if we ought to have him back here, instead.”

“What?” Tony said intelligently. No, no, no, they could not have his time-travelling butler. Or his butler-willing-to-put-up-with-Avengers-craziness. Not to mention his _Thomas_. 

“He’s properly our responsibility, in a way,” he explained. “It’s one thing we’ve always prided ourselves on, in this family. Downton takes care of its own. I’m sure he’ll be better off here, in a familiar environment. Out of the public eye. We’ll bring him on as headwaiter and historical consultant, something of that sort.” Grantham nodded as if it were all settled.

Tony stared at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, one doesn’t like to poach someone else’s staff, does one?”

“Are you, like, seriously for real?” Tony asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you want to offer Thomas a job, offer him a job,” Tony said. “By, you know, talking to him.” It was the same thing the SHIELD shrink had done—deciding what was best for Thomas and then discussing it with all relevant parties with the glaring exception of _Thomas_. “What’s difficult about this?” 

Grantham sat back in his chair, looking as though Tony had just taken a shit on the middle of the table, and Grantham wanted everyone to notice he was too stiff-upper-lipped to say anything about it. “Well, of course I shall speak to him. I simply thought you’d like to know.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine.” Grantham was still sitting there, so Tony added, “Bye,” before pointedly turning his attention back to his tablet, where he started looking up salary ranges for hotel headwaiters in Great Britain, so he could make sure they were already topping Grantham’s offer.

#

“So, uh,” Tony said. “That Grantham guy. Earl Roger whatever. Came and talked to me today.”

“Yes?” Thomas asked. They were in Tony’s room, discussing what to do for dinner—the choices being, dining at the hotel or Something Else—in a desultory sort of way. 

“I think—well, no, I _know_ —he’s gonna offer you a job.”

“Oh.” Thomas was not at all sure how to feel about that. 

“Yeah, he was all, so good of you to give him a job, old bean, but Downton takes care of its own, blah-blah-blah old-fashioned-valuesy-cakes. So, you know. There’s that.”

“What did you tell him?” It was one way of getting rid of him, Thomas supposed, if Mr. Stark had decided that the last few days had complicated their employer-employee relationship overmuch.

“That if he wants to offer you a job, he should, you know, do that. Dunno. It was weird; it seemed like he kinda thought we’d just say hey, you work here now, kay-thanks-bye.” 

That was certainly how the Lord Grantham Thomas knew would have done it. At least, if anyone other than Thomas had been involved. “I see.”

“Yeah, so, you know.” 

What, exactly, Thomas was supposed to know was not specified. It ought to have been welcome news---the number of times he’d scrambled to get or keep a job at Downton Abbey, and here he was having one handed him on a platter. But it didn’t feel like good news. Instead, it felt more like walls closing in on him. He’d scrambled to get _away_ from Downton just as often as he’d fought to stay. If being transported over ninety years into the future wasn’t enough to get him free of this place, what in God’s name would be? 

Clawing his way back into Downton’s good graces had always been something in the nature of a fallback position—a place to retreat when one of his schemes didn’t work out. Or, to be more accurate, failed spectacularly. The question was, was living in New York and being under-butler to a lot of superheroes about to fail spectacularly? Thomas didn’t think so, but he rarely saw these things coming.

He supposed there was one way he might try to found out. “Do you think I should?” he asked. “Work here instead?”

It wasn’t until Mr. Stark answered that Thomas realized he’d hoped Tony would say something like, “God no, you should come back to New York and keep having lots of sex with me.”

Which, oddly, Thomas could actually imagine him saying. Out loud. But instead, Mr. Stark said, “Wouldn’t hurt to listen to his pitch, I guess.”

That didn’t exactly answer Thomas’s question. Tony went back to reading the names of nearby restaurants out loud from his phone, while Thomas attempted to conceal his irritation. It was a relief when the room’s telephone—one that looked almost like a _real_ telephone—rang. 

It was the reception desk, asking if it would be convenient for Thomas to meet with Ms. Crawley—they meant Lady Violet, Thomas realized—before dinner. It wasn’t difficult to guess what the topic would be. He felt sort of ill, but Mr. Stark had said to listen to the pitch, so he agreed to go down and listen to the pitch.

He went down and was directed to the manager’s office. Lady Violet stood to one side of a large oak desk; seated behind it was the Earl of Grantham. In person, he looked even more like his great-grandfather than he had in the website photographs. 

Sounded like him, too, when he said, “Barrow. Thank you for coming,” in a tone that managed to convey the sense that they all understood Thomas was the one who ought to be thankful. 

No one asked him to sit down or offered him anything to eat or drink, but Thomas was not as pleased with this complete absence of extraordinary behavior has he thought he might be. Nor did he enjoy it much when Lord Grantham embarked on a long speech that began, “As you know, this is a house with a long and proud history…” and ranged over the topics of One’s Duty To the Community, the Old Fashioned Values which We Hold Dear, and Thomas’s personal history with the house. It was, in its way, a very fine speech. The sort of thing he might have imagined a Lord Grantham saying to, say, Bates, and not the likes of him. 

But rather than enjoying it, Thomas found himself realizing that not only was this Lord Grantham a pompous, condescending _prat_ , the other one likely had been a bit of one, too. When Grantham finally worked his way around to the actual job offer— _head_ waiter, good heavens—Thomas found himself saying, “No, thanks.”

Grantham ground to a halt, and looked at Thomas as though he must have misunderstood.

“I mean, I appreciate it, my lord, but I’ve already got a job I’m quite pleased with. In New York.”

And that was, largely, that. Lady Violet said a few polite things about how she hoped he and Mr. Stark had enjoyed their stay; Thomas said a few polite things about how they had, and left without waiting to be dismissed. 

#

“Another, sir?” the barmaid asked. 

“Sure, why not,” Tony said. He’d come down to the hotel bar while Thomas had his meeting with His Douchiness. He wasn’t sure how that was going to go. Heading down to it, Thomas certainly hadn’t looked as happy as a guy who was about to be at the center of a bidding war between Stark Industries and an earl ought to be. 

It made sense, he supposed, that Thomas might want to take the job here. It was, apparently, the first place he’d thought of going on his vacation, so he must _like_ it here. And they probably wouldn’t do things like eat cake with their hands or show up in the common areas without pants. Plus, as head-waiter, Thomas would have actual human minions to supervise, not just a couple of—even Tony had to admit it—slightly buggy bots. 

Thomas, he thought, was the kind of guy who would appreciate minions. 

So when Thomas came into the bar—looking much more pleased with life, the universe, and everything that he had been when they parted company—the first thing Tony said was, “If it’s about the minions, we can get you some minions.”

“I’m sorry?” Thomas said.

“If what this place has that the Tower doesn’t is minions, I can hire some more people.”

Thomas blinked. “Oh. So I take it you still need an under-butler.”

“Yep,” Tony said hopefully.

“Good,” Thomas said. “Since I already told Lord Grantham I didn’t want the job.”

Tony’s cry of “ _Awesome_!” had several British people turning their heads to look at him. He didn’t care. He beckoned the barmaid over. “This calls for Champagne.”

“Buckets of it, I hope,” Thomas said.

**Epilogue** :

On their return to New York, Thomas was relieved to find that standards of housekeeping had not declined precipitously in his absence, though he suspected the fact that Tony had also been away was largely responsible. He got his and Mr. Stark’s things unpacked, scheduled the next Cannoli Day, and ordered groceries for the next team dinner. 

When he retired to his apartment in the evening—Tony was in the workshop, and likely to be there for some time, so there was no question of his sleeping elsewhere on this particular night—he found a package on his kitchen table, gift-wrapped in the distinctive ivory paper and green ribbon of the Downton Abbey gift shop. 

Tony had brought back gifts for all of his teammates, as well as Ms. Potts, Agent Coulson, and Director Fury; Thomas gathered that most of these were intended to be humorous, though Prince Thor had accepted his assortment of floral-scented bath salts with great enthusiasm and without apparent irony. 

So Thomas wasn’t at all sure what to expect from his. And when he opened it, he still wasn’t sure. It seemed to be a small plastic tray, printed with a watercolor of Downton Abbey in the springtime. With a couple of oddly placed holes in it. He examined it from several angles before finally saying, “I give up. Mr. Jarvis, do you have any idea what this is?”

“I believe,” Mr. Jarvis said, “it is a Starkphone case with a picture of your former place of employment on it.”

“Oh, I see.” Taking out his phone, Thomas was able to figure out how it fitted into the case—the holes were placed so that it could be plugged in and the camera function could be used with the case on. “Well, that’s...unexpected. Do they sell these, or did he…?”

“It appears to be a standard gift shop item,” Mr. Jarvis reported. “But Mr. Stark wishes me to say that he thought it particularly appropriate for you.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “It sort of is, isn’t it.”

He’d have to thank him later.

_End_


End file.
